Margaret looked, and a figure lounging against one of the doorposts of the house took her look for himself and bowed.
"That's nobody," said Paul quickly. "Don't look that way. It 's—it 's a tramp that came to me—and I gave him a shilling to keep still and be modeled—and he knows my mother—and he 's staying in the house. He 's beastly; don't look that way."
His solicitude and his jealousy made Margaret smile.
"I shouldn't see him if I did," she said. "Don't you worry, Paul. Then—this afternoon?"
"Under the dam," replied Paul. "Good-by. He's waiting for a chance to come and speak to you."
"Let him wait," replied Margaret, and turned homewards, scrupulously averting her face from the ingratiating figure of Boy Bailey.
That pensioner of fortune watched her pass along the trodden path to the Sanatorium till she was clear of the farm, and then put himself into easy movement to go across to Paul. The uncanny combination of Christian's clothes and his own personality drifted through the arrogant sunlight and over the sober earth, a monstrous affront to the temperate eye. He was like a dangerous clown or a comical Mephistopheles. Paul, pondering as he came, thought of a pig equipped with the venom of the puff-adder of the Karoo. As he drew near, the boy fell to work on the chain and yokes.
"Well, my dear boy." The man's shadow and his voice reached Paul together. He did not look up, but went on loosening the cross bar of a yoke from its link.
"There 's more in this place of yours than meets the eye at a first glance," said Boy Bailey. "You 're well off, my lad. Not only milk and honey for the trouble of lifting 'em to your mouth, but dalliance, silken dalliance in broad daylight. What would your dear mother say if she knew?"
"I don't know," said the boy. "Ask her?"