“Hello, Jack—hello!”
An answering hail came over the water, and the “Gray Gull” began to put inshore.
“Hold on, Pierre; we don’t go any further,” said George, his eyes sparkling with pleasure. “You can skip back home.”
“Ma foi! You—you go on that thing, Monsieur George? It isn’t possible. No—no; you say it for to make a laugh—what you call it in English a joke; ees that not it?”
“Joke, nothing, Pierre. Just wait here a minute and you’ll see me sailing away.”
“I no understand it, monsieur. Your uncle, he knows?”
“Now look here, Pierre,” said George, whose eyes were beginning to flash; “I don’t see that it’s any of your affair. I’m surprised at you. Stop here, and I’ll get out.”
“Ha—that man again,” cried the chauffeur, suddenly. “Ah, ha, monsieur your uncle say to him, ‘Keep away—I no want you here.’ Yes, saire.”
“Great Scott!” gasped George. “If it isn’t Norman Redfern standing on the deck. Well, of all things! I thought he had gone back to the Palisades.”
Although more than glad to see his former tutor, George was vexed that the chauffeur should have noted his presence, especially as Pierre had, for some reason or other, taken a strong dislike to him and never made any effort to conceal it. Then, again, he felt that his uncle would certainly object to his traveling in company with the young man whom he had so unceremoniously discharged; yet to back out now would be to put upon Norman a slight which he felt was not deserved.