“If that is the only objection,” Kit laughed, “maybe we can make a compromise. I never cared anything about caves, but I should like to see the house that Mr. Moore lived in. My collection of foreign curiosities includes a count and a cardinal so far, you know. I should like to add a poet.”
After a little bantering, Mr. Clark agreed to go as far as Walsingham, Mr. Moore’s house, but declared that he would on no account go near the caves. And it was as well that there were two to divide the expense of the carriage between, for Bermuda cab fares are “on the American plan,” not on the cheaper European scale.
They found the poet’s house to be a plain double two-story edifice of stone, so blackened by time and weather that it looked gloomy in the extreme; and the yard in front grown up with bushes, a large lake in the rear studded with black rocks and bordered with dismal drooping mangrove trees, and the general dilapidation of the place, added to the sombreness.
Kit was much amused at Mr. Clark’s positive refusal to get out of the carriage, for fear of something happening. But he got out himself and went all over the place, and was satisfied that nothing but the most solemn poetry could ever have been written in so gloomy a place.
“You don’t really mean that you’re afraid of something happening when you go ashore with me, Mr. Clark, do you?” Kit asked his companion on the way back to the ship. “You must be joking about that.”
“Not exactly in the way you mean,” the purser answered. “But some people are always having adventures of one kind or another; it comes natural to them; and I think you’re one of that sort. It’s all very well for youngsters like you. But when you come to be my age, or especially my weight, you’ll find that a trifling adventure may mean something serious. To slip into a lake means a bad cold, as I know to my cost; a fall may mean some broken bones. No; adventures are for the young and spry, not for the old and fat.”
“Well, we have certainly had a safe and quiet trip ashore this time, sir,” Kit said, with a laugh, as, once more on deck, they reached the door of their office. “This whole voyage is about as quiet a trip as any one could ask for.”
At that moment his eye caught sight of a small bluish envelope lying sealed upon his desk. It was addressed simply to “Silburn, str. Trinidad, Bermuda,” and the printing across the top indicated that it was a cable message. He hastily tore it open and read:
“Silburn str Trinidad Bermuda Photograph received very encouraging Genevieve”
There was no punctuation, hardly any divisions between the words; but its meaning was plain enough.