“Very well,” she faltered, glancing for an instant up to my face. “It is a bargain—if you wish it to be so.”
“I wish, Mabel, to carry out the promise I made to your father,” I said. “As you know, I am greatly indebted to him for much generosity, and I wish, therefore, as a mark of gratitude, to stand in his place and protect his daughter—yourself.”
“But were we not, in the first place, both indebted to you?” she said. “If it had not been for Mr Seton and yourself I might have wandered on until I died by the wayside.”
“For what was your father searching?” I asked. “He surely told you?”
“No, he never did. I am in entire ignorance of the reason of his three years of tramping up and down England. He had a distinct object, which he accomplished, but what it actually was he would never reveal to me.”
“It was, I suppose, in connexion with that document he always carried?”
“I believe it was,” was her response. Then she added, returning to her previous observations, “Why speak of your indebtedness to him, Mr Greenwood, when I know full well how you sold your best horse in order to pay my school fees at Bournemouth, and that you could not hunt that season in consequence? You denied yourself the only little pleasure you had, in order that I might be well cared for.”
“I forbid you to mention that again,” I said quickly. “Recollect we are now friends, and between friends there can be no question of indebtedness.”
“Then you must not talk of any little service my father rendered to you,” she laughed. “Come, now, I shall be unruly if you don’t keep to your part of the bargain!”
And so we were compelled at that juncture to cry quits, and we recommenced our friendship on a firm and perfectly well-defined basis.