“Your airs,” replied Darsie bluntly. “And graces! You asked me, you know, so I’m bound to tell you. It’s so odd to see a boy like that. But you needn’t be cross. I’m speaking only for myself. Those other girls liked it very much... You could see that for yourself.”
“Just so. We are talking of your opinion at the moment, however, not of theirs. What sort of—er—boys are you accustomed to meet, if one may ask?”
The strong accent thrown on the word “boys” showed a fresh ground of complaint. Darsie felt a twinge of compunction, remembering the episode of the punt and her own great cause for gratitude. The answer came with startling earnestness.
“Not a bit braver than you, nor quicker and cleverer in an emergency. Perhaps not so good. If you’d hesitated one moment I mightn’t have been here to criticise. But, just big, simple boys, not an ounce of affectation between them. Of course, they are not handsome. That makes a difference...”
But Ralph was not to be mollified by a compliment on his good looks. He was irritated, and considered that he had good reason for being so. Darsie Garnett was an unusually pretty and attractive girl, and having saved her from a perilous position but a fortnight earlier, it had been an agreeable delusion to imagine himself ensconced for life in her estimation as a gallant young rescuer, the object of her undying gratitude and admiration—a delusion indeed, since the criticism of those mocking eyes was more than equalled by the explicitness of her explanations!
Ralph looked injured and melancholy, and Darsie, with characteristic softness of heart, was instantly seized with compunction. She was finding out for herself what every one who came in contact with Ralph Percival discovered sooner or later—that it was exceedingly difficult to keep up a feeling of offence against any one who showed his displeasure in so interesting and attractive a fashion.
He was so handsome, so graceful in movement, he had the art of concealing the most ordinary emotions behind a cloak of baffling superiority. To-day, as he paced the garden paths by Darsie’s side, Ralph wore the air of a lovelorn poet, of a patriot sorrowing for his country, an artist wrestling over a life’s masterpiece, like anything or everything, in fact, but just what he was—a sulky and empty-headed young gentleman, wounded in his own conceit!
To her own amazement Darsie presently found herself engaged in the humble position of “making it up,” and in taking back one after another each disparaging remark which she had made, which, being done, Ralph graciously consented to “think no more about it!” and strolled off to speak to a friend, leaving her stranded by herself at the far end of the garden.
The position would have been an uncomfortable one had it not happened that just at that moment a bell rang loudly, followed by a sudden gathering together of the guests upon the cedar lawn. Mr Percival was making some announcement which was greeted by bursts of approving laughter. The words of the announcement were inaudible to Darsie’s ears, but the purport was unmistakable. The treasure hunt had begun! With one accord the guests turned and streamed in the direction of the gardens, turning to right and to left, peering beneath bushes, poking delicately among the foliage of flower-beds with the ferules of walking-sticks and parasols...
Darsie turned and fled like a lapwing along the path leading past the tennis-lawn and rose and vegetable gardens, to the shaded fern grotto which formed one of the boundaries of the grounds. The idea had come to her to begin, so to speak, at the end and have the field to herself, but, as is usually the case, she was to discover that others were as ingenious as herself, for she had soon quite a string of followers along the narrow paths.