"Don't you? Here it is, then! This morning, bright and early, I saw you promenading the shore with Miss Rose. This evening, I saw you making up to Cherrie Nettleby; and, ten minutes ago, you were as sweet as sugar-candy on Natty Marsh. No man can be in love with three women at once, without getting into trouble. Therefore, take a friend's advice, and drop two of them."
"Which two?"
"That's your affair. Please yourself."
"Precisely what I mean to do; and now, Val, old boy, keep your own counsel; there's no harm done, and there will be none. A man cannot help being polite to a pretty girl—it's nature, you know; and, dear old fellow, don't see so much, if you can help it. It is rather annoying, and will do neither of us any good."
Perhaps Captain Cavendish would have been still more annoyed had he known Val was not the only witness of that little flirtation with Cherrie. As that young lady, when he left her, after watching him out of sight, was about crossing the road to go into the house, a voice suddenly called, "Hallo, Cherrie! How are you?"
Cherrie looked up greatly astonished, for the voice came from above her head. Was it the voice of a spirit?—if so, the spirit must have a shocking bad cold in the head, and inclined to over-familiarity at that. The voice came again, and still from above.
"I say, Cherrie! You put in a pretty long stretch of courting that time! I like to see you cutting out the rest of the Speckport girls, and getting that military swell all to yourself."
Cherrie beheld the speaker at last; and a very substantial spirit he was, perched up on a very high branch of a tree, his legs dangling about in the atmosphere, and his hands stuck in his trowsers.
"Lor!" cried Miss Nettleby, quite startled, "if it ain't that Bill Blair! I declare I took it for a ghost!"
Bill kicked his heels about in an ecstasy.