"We?" Enid looked at her mother in bewilderment.
"That was the word I used," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane sternly. "Jordan, I am sure, would not allow us to go on such an expedition alone; he will doubtless be willing to lend us his support—morally and physically."
"Certainly—if you wish it," said Jordan Tant humbly. "Most delighted. To Newhaven, by all means."
CHAPTER XII
MISS MAKE-BELIEVE WAKES UP
IT becomes necessary that we should return to the deck of that yacht Blue Bird, there to discover Mr. Daniel Meggison beaming upon Gilbert Byfield, and inwardly congratulating himself on having once more stepped straight into the heart of a difficult and delicate business. We have to imagine the state of mind of that misguided young man Gilbert, in once again finding himself saddled with Mr. Daniel Meggison.
Yet, if the truth be told, there was behind this resentment some faint sneaking feeling of relief. In imagination he had gone over scenes that must presently be enacted on that yacht; and always had come against a dead wall, beyond which he could not go; and that dead wall had sprung up hard and firm whenever he thought of how he must look into the eyes of Bessie Meggison. He had seen her in many different moods—still always in his imagination; but, to do the man credit, he had seen her always pure. Which is only another way of saying that she had always been the girl he had first imagined her to be.
Shorn of all the romantic element in it, the thing had painted itself in brutal colours; and Byfield had been able to leap the years, as it were, and to see her in the future. He had set out to do this thing with the finest motives, and it was not his fault entirely that his hand had been forced, and that he had been compelled to take a different course from that he had at first contemplated; nevertheless he could not blink the fact that what he was to do now was shameful. So that the coming of Daniel Meggison, while it changed every plan he had, yet relieved the situation of awkwardness; there were to be none of those scenes between himself and Bessie, when she would demand an explanation he could not fully give.
Nevertheless (such is the inconsistency of man) he rebelled at the thought that once again this man Meggison was to take matters into his own hands, and to do as he liked, with the unconscious aid of the girl. Gilbert was quite prepared to end the matter, and, however, reluctantly, to be done with the whole business for ever; but he was not prepared to go on with it under present conditions. The thing resolved itself into the ridiculous; this carrying away into the world of Mr. Daniel Meggison, in the absurd frock-coat and silk hat of his supposed respectability.