"Hum-m-m! Nothing more than that, eh? Just a natural dislike? And your Aunt Ruth; what of her?"
"Oh, just the regulation prim old maid: sour as a lemon and as useful. A good sort, though. Fond of the pater, careful as a mother of him, temper like a file, and a heart a good deal bigger than you'd believe at first blush. Do anything in the world for me, bless her."
"Even to the point of putting up a friend of yours for a couple of days?"
"Yes; if I had one in these parts, which I haven't."
"Never count your chickens—you know the rest," said Cleek, with a smile. "A fellow you met out in India, a fellow named George Headland, lieutenant, remember the name, please, has just turned up in these parts. You met him quite unexpectedly, and if you want to get at the bottom of this case, take him along with you and get your Aunt Ruth to put him up for a day or two."
"Oh, Mr. Cleek!"
"George Headland, if you please, Miss Lorne. There's a great deal in a name, Shakespeare or anybody else to the contrary."
II
It was two o'clock in the afternoon when, after lunching with Cleek at the inn of "The Three Desires," Lieutenant
Bridewell turned up at the divided house with his friend, "George Headland," and introduced him to the various occupants thereof; and, forthwith, "Mr. George Headland" proceeded to make himself as agreeable to all parties as he knew how to do. He found Aunt Ruth the very duplicate of what young Bridewell had prepared him to find, namely, a veritable Dorcas: the very embodiment of thrift, energy, punctiliousness, with the graceful figure of a ramrod and the martial step of a grenadier; and he decided forthwith that, be she a monument of all the virtues, she was still just the kind of woman he would fly to the ends of the earth rather than have to live with for one short week. In brief, he did not like Miss Ruth Sutcliff, and Miss Ruth Sutcliff did not like him.