Part 2 (1/2)
”Then why did you go after it?”
”Why?” asked Norah, opening her eyes. ”Well, I knew the dogs couldn't catch it--and I believe you wanted a gallop nearly as much as I did, Daddy!” They laughed at each other, and let the impatient horses have their heads across the cleared paddock to the homestead.
There a letter awaited them.
Norah, coming in to dinner in a white frock, with her curls unusually tidy, found her father looking anything but pleased over a closely covered sheet of thin notepaper.
”I wish to goodness women would write legibly,” he said, with some heat. ”No one on earth has any right to write on both sides of paper as thin as this--and then across it! No one but your Aunt Eva would do it--she always had a pa.s.sion for small economies, together with one for large extravagances. Amazing woman! Well, I can't read half of it, but what she wants is unhappily clear.”
”She isn't coming here, Daddy?”
”Saints forbid!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Linton, who had a lively dread of his sister--a lady of much social eminence, who disapproved strongly of his upbringing of Norah. ”No, she doesn't mention such an extreme course, but there's something almost as alarming. She wants to send Cecil here for Christmas.”
”Cecil! Oh, Daddy!” Norah's tone was eloquent.
”Says he's been ill,” said her father, glancing at the letter in a vain effort to decipher a message written along one edge. ”He's better, but needs change, and she seems to think Billabong will prove a sanatorium.” He looked at Norah with an expression of dismay that was comical. ”I shouldn't have thought we'd agree with that young man a bit, Norah!”
”I've never seen him, of course,” Norah said unhappily, ”but Jim says he's pretty awful. And you didn't like him yourself, did you, Daddy?”
”On the rare occasions that I've had the pleasure of meeting my nephew I've always thought him an unlicked cub,” Mr. Linton answered. ”Of course it's eighteen months since I saw him; possibly he may have changed for the better, but at that time his b.u.mptiousness certainly appeared to be on the increase. He had just left school then--he must be nearly twenty now.”
”Oh--quite old,” said Norah. ”What is he like?”
”Pretty!” said Mr. Linton, wrinkling his nose. ”As pretty as his name--Cecil--great Scott! I wonder if he'd let me call him Bill for short! Bit of a whipper-snapper, he seemed; but I didn't take very much notice of him--saw he was plainly bored by his uncle from the Bush, so I didn't worry him. Well, now he's ours for a time your aunt doesn't limit--more that that, if I can make a guess at these hieroglyphics, I've got to send a telegram to say we'll have him on Sat.u.r.day.”
”And this is Wednesday--oh, Dad!” expostulated Norah.
”Can't be helped,” her father said. ”We've got to go through with it; if the boy has been ill he must certainly have all the change we can give him. But I'm doubtful. Eva says he's had a 'nervous breakdown,'
and I rather think it's a complaint I don't believe in for boys of twenty.”
The dinner gong sounded. Amid its echoes Norah might have been heard murmuring something about ”nervous grandmother.”
”H'm,” said her father, laughing; ”I don't think he'll find much sympathy with his more fragile symptoms in Billabong--we must try to brace him up, Norah. But whatever will Jim say, I wonder!”
”He'll be too disgusted for words,” Norah answered. ”Poor old Jimmy! I wonder how they'll get on. D'you suppose Cecil ever played football?”
”From Cecil's appearance I should say he devoted his time to wool-work,” said Mr. Linton. ”However, it may not turn out as badly as we think, and it's no use meeting trouble halfway, is it? Also, we've to remember that he'll be our guest.”
”But that's the trouble,” said Norah, laughing. ”It wouldn't be half so bad if you could laugh at him. I'll have to be so hugely polite!”
”You'll probably shock him considerably in any case,” said her father.
”Cecil's accustomed to very prim young ladies, and it's not at all unlikely that he'll try to reform you!”
”I wish him luck!” said Norah. But there was a glint in her eyes which boded ill for Cecil's reformatory efforts.
CHAPTER III
A BATH--AND AN INTRODUCTION