"I'm ashamed of that fellow of mine," he said. "Yet I cannot help being attached to the ruffian. He would die to serve me; but the ribaldry of an English crowd is too much for his temperament."
"If you don't want him to die without serving you, Mr. Melchard," replied the parson, "I should advise you to keep him in better control."
"Ah, well! I owe him so much already, you see. The strange fellow saved my life in the Persian Gulf. Serang—boat's swain, you know, to the Lascar crew. Sharks in the water—horrible!"
The parson thought that even in this the serang had done the world poor service.
Having delicately wiped his face with a ladylike handkerchief in memory of his danger and gratitude, Melchard tried again.
"I saw you arrive with your quaint team, sir," he said; "the unicorn, I mean, not the eleven."
But the parson allowed no outsider to poke fun at the St. Asaph's cricket club.
"Handled his horses in fine style, your driver. Why!" exclaimed Melchard, as if noticing Dick and Amaryllis with her head on his shoulder for the first time, "there he is—and pleasantly occupied. I mean the fellow with the girl in his arms, and the cut on his face. I wonder how he got it."
Amaryllis heard the voice and the words, and, to keep her breath from gasping and her body from trembling, she caught and ground between her teeth a wrinkle of Dick's coat.
Melchard, she felt, had taken a step towards her.