"Oh, by Jove!" Spoof exclaimed. "I seem to have messed things up. I'm afraid you will think me an awful rotter, Miss Hall. Really"—turning to Jack—"really, it wasn't I that shot the bally hare at all——"
"You're only getting in deeper," said Jack. "'Fess up, and stay for supper."
Spoof did both, and a jolly night we had, playing euchre after the supper dishes were cleared away. But before he left he recalled that an errand of mercy lay at the bottom of his visit.
"I dropped into Brown's the other day," he said. "Mrs. Brown is a bit fed up. Staring out of the window, and all that kind of thing. Poor old Brown is quite useless; worse than I am, if that is possible, but his wife has quality in her that will count, if she doesn't go under first. She needs you two girls over there now and again, just to put a bit of sunshine in her soul."
"This is a land of sunshine," I said, quite inappropriately.
"Of physical sunshine, yes. But the heart withers up on that alone. You natural born pioneers don't understand. You are the second or third generation at the business, all of you. You glory in the wilderness, you revel in it, you subdue it. The lust of these things is born in you. But she—she is a game-keeper's wife. You can't possibly understand. The memory of it all; the hedges and lanes and rose-gardens and the—the security of England; the memory of these is tearing her very heart out."
"They know where we live."
"They have not been introduced."
"Nonsense!"
"I know it's nonsense," Spoof continued. "I've learned that much. They haven't. Do you think they would be guilty of such an unpardonable thing as to call on you first? You can't understand, but over in England we have a saying, 'It isn't done.' When an Englishman says 'It isn't done;' the argument is ended. After that has been said the thing really isn't done, and everybody understands that it can't possibly be done. Now just hitch up the oxen to-morrow and slip over to section Four and jolly her out of the dumps."