But Mrs. Eversleigh declined on the plea of having some household matters to attend to.
"I can't go with you," she said, "but I'll tell you what to do. You two girls can take your cycles, and Gilbert can borrow his brother Ernest's wheel, and ride to Molesey."
"And get a punt there. The very thing," said Gilbert, in the mood to welcome hard exercise, and so to work off his trouble. "I suppose," he said to his mother, "I'll find some of Ernie's boating things in his room?"
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Eversleigh, and he went off to change his clothes.
Presently the three young people were cycling to Molesey, which they soon reached. A punt was quickly procured, and, in a few seconds more, Gilbert was poling it up-stream with remarkable vigour considering the heat of the day.
"You are working hard," said Kitty, noting his extraordinary exertions.
"Oh, never mind him," sweetly remarked his sister. "It's good for him."
"But won't you over-heat yourself, Gilbert?" asked Kitty. And though he replied with thanks that he was all right, she insisted after a short while that he must take an easy, and moor the punt under a shady bank.
He obeyed her, and then Kitty, to his secret discomfiture, must needs talk about the coming of her father, her heart being full of the subject. And as she talked his trouble seemed to melt away, for she spoke of the happy times they all would have when Morris Thornton was in England, and obviously included Gilbert in her notion of these happy times. The three chatted gaily for an hour, and then they set off down-stream.
They had gone several hundred yards, perhaps, when they met, moving at top speed, a racing-skiff, the occupant of which bowed to them with a rapid inclination of his head, but did not stop.