"What you heard by stealth, creeping about here at night, prying into other people's affairs!"
"I have pledged myself to care for Miss Pat."
"It's noble of you, Donovan!" and he stepped away from me, grinning. "Miss Pat suggests nothing to me but 'button, button, who's got the button?' She's a bloomin' aristocrat, while I'm the wealth-cursed child of democracy."
"You're a charming specimen!" I growled.
It was plain that he saw nothing out of the way in thus conniving with Helen Holbrook against her aunt, and that he had not been struck by the enormity of the girl's conduct in taking money from him. He drew in his canoe as I debated with myself what to do with him.
"You've got to leave the lake," I said. "You've got to go."
"Then I'm going, thank you!"
He sprang into the canoe, driving it far out of my reach; his paddle splashed, and he was gone.
"Is that you, sir?" called Ijima behind me. "I thought I heard some one talking."
"It is nothing, Ijima."