‘I should have done little without John,’ said Mr. Neuchamp. ‘He came up like Blücher at Waterloo, and I was as impatiently awaiting his arrival as the Duke. Here—receive Miss Frankston’s thanks, John; then, with her permission, you can go and ask the butler for some beer. I daresay you feel equal to it.’
‘You have behaved this day, John Windsor, like a brave man and a true Australian,’ said Antonia, giving her hand to Jack, which he shook carefully and with much caution, relinquishing the dainty palm with evident relief. ‘My father will know how to thank the rescuer of his daughter; and she will remember you as a gallant fellow and a friend in need all the days of her life.’
‘Thank you, miss,’ said Mr. Windsor, with a respectful yet puzzled air. ‘I’ve had many a worse shindy than this in my time, and got no thanks either—’tother way on, ‘ndeed. But of course I couldn’t help rolling in, seeing the master double-banked, and you young ladies being made to join a water-party against your wills. Don’t you have no more truck with them boats, miss; they’re too uncertain altogether. Nothing like dry land to my taste; even if the season’s bad, there’s a something to hang on by. My respects, miss, and I’ll try that beer; my throat’s like a bark chimney with the soot afire.’
‘And now I must order you, Mr. Neuchamp, to betake yourself to your room. Look in the glass and see if your complexion hasn’t suffered. Was it the Count’s blood which flowed, or did you scratch your face with the prickly pear hedge? Let me look! Merciful heaven!’ exclaimed the girl, with a half scream, as she narrowly scanned her deliverer’s face; ‘why, there is the deep trace of a bullet on your temple. How providential that it was the least bit wide—a slight turn of your head—a shade nearer the temple, and you would have been lying there dead—dead! How awful to think of!’
Here she covered her face with her hands. Tears trickled through the slender palms as her overwrought feelings found relief in a sudden burst of weeping.
Mr. Neuchamp’s attempts at consolation would appear not to have been wholly ineffectual, if one may judge from the concluding sentences of rather a long-whispered conversation, all carried on prior to the lavation of his gory countenance.
‘I always thought,’ said Antonia, smiling through her tears, with as much satirical emphasis as could coexist with so sudden an access of happiness, ‘that you wanted some one to take care of you in Australia. I fear I have been led into undertaking a very serious responsibility.’
‘May it not be the other way?’ very naturally inquired Ernest. ‘If I had not been, as Jack would say, “there or thereabouts” to-day, some one might have been a pirate’s bride, after all. Miss Folleton, of course, had prior claims, but——‘
‘But—please to go and render yourself presentable, this instant. We shall have such an amount of talking to do before we can put poor dear old pappy in possession of all the news. Good gracious, how can we ever tell him? How furious he will be!’
‘Will he?’ inquired Ernest, with affected apprehension; ‘perhaps we had better defer our——’