cause you make him. You've no ill-will towards him?"

"I've no feeling at all about him, except that it's awkward his being
here."

"Then we'll just put the blame on Providence, and sit tight, as I said
before. I'll see you come to no harm, my child. I could make that
young man, or any young man, fly to the other end of the island by
simply looking at him."

"Think so, dear?" and Margaret, the issue being decided for her, came
back to equanimity.

"Sure!" said Miss Penny.

VII

He was sitting on the low stone wall that shut off the cobble-paved
forecourt from the road, with his back towards them, when they
sauntered through the open door after breakfast. He was smoking the
choice after-breakfast pipe of peace, legs dangling, back bent, hands
loosely clasped between his knees. He was very beautifully dressed as
regards tie and collar--for the rest, light tweeds and cap of the
same, and shoes which struck Miss Penny as flat. But these things she
only noticed later. At present all she saw was a square light-tweed
back, and a curl of fragrant smoke rising over its left shoulder.

Below him in the dust were his two friends,--Punch, gravely observant
of his every movement, and occasionally following the smoke with an
interested eye; Scamp, no less watchful, but panting like a motor-car,
and apparently exhausted with unrewarded scoutings up and down every
possible route for the day's programme.

In the hedge, on the opposite side of the road, sat a very small boy
bunched up into an odd little heap, out of which looked a long sharp
little face and a pair of black eyes as sharp as gimlets and as bright
as a rat's, and beside him sat a big black cat busy on its toilet,
which it interrupted in order to eye the ladies keenly when they
appeared.

"Now, see you here, my son," they heard from the other side of the
broad tweed back, "if you don't make it fine for the next thirty days
you and I will have words together. If you want it to rain, let it
rain in the night. Not a drop after four A.M., you understand. If you
turn it on after four in the morning there'll be another rupture of
diplomatic relations between you and me, same as there was last
night."

The small boy's beady eyes twinkled, and he squeaked a few words in
Sarkese.

"You have the advantage of me, Johnnie. And I've told you before it's
not polite to address a gentleman in a language he's not familiar
with, when you're perfectly acquainted with his own.