"What's wrong?" asked Britton, remembering the youth's capacity for getting into trouble. "Been quarreling with someone in the house?"
"Quarreling? Not much–worse luck!" the boy blurted out ingenuously. "But, by Jove, aunt has the beastliest temper in Sussex! She's down on the theosophist she hired about something or other. Packed her off in the rain!"
"What?" Rex asked, interestedly. "Lady Rossland packed off the hired Mahatma woman?"
"Just that," Guy answered. "In a cab with James, through all the beastly rain–to the Crystal Hotel. That's the best in New Shoreham, and aunt told James to pay the bill."
Rex was thinking retrospectively. If his own concerns had not compelled the deepest gravity, he would have been inclined to laugh. As it was, he gave Guy a speculative look.
"Beastly temper aunt has," the youth continued. "Jove, didn't she rate me! Gave me fits for not holding down my position–guess it must have been on account of the tent. How'd I know the stuffy thing would blow? And Kinmair, the bally idiot, on the river with Dora! drat him!"
The nephew rattled on with the frank tongue of youth, and a smile grew by degrees around Britton's mouth and eyes. It was like the smile of a soldier in the firing line when he gets an unexpected respite and forgets for a brief moment the lurking danger and the strain.
"I wouldn't take it to heart," Rex said while the smile lasted. "It wasn't your fault, Guy, and, now I come to think of it, perhaps–I–I should have closed that conservatory window."
In the smoking-room Britton found Ainsworth whom he had been seeking.
"Stay with the pole instead of the punt?" asked Ainsworth, lightly, surveying his friend's wet clothes.