Salthaven

"Nothing fresh about Trimblett, I suppose?" he yelled.

Truefitt shook his head again.

"He's a deep 'un!" cried Sellers—"wonderful deep! How's the other one? Bearing up? I ain't seen her about the last day or two. I believe that was all a dodge of Trimblett's to put us off the scent. It made a fool of me."

Mr. Truefitt, with a nervous glance at the open windows of his house, turned and walked hastily down the garden again.

"He quite deceived me," continued Captain Sellers, following—"quite. What did you say?"

"Nothing," bawled Mr. Truefitt, with sudden ferocity.

"Eh!" yelled the captain, leaning over the fence with his hand to his ear.

"Nothing!"

"Eh?" said the captain, anxiously. "Speak up! What?"

"Oh, go to—Jericho!" muttered Mr. Truefitt, and, taking Miss Willett by the arm, disappeared into the summer-house again. "Where were we when that old idiot interrupted us?" he inquired, tenderly.

Miss Willett told him, and, nestling within his encircling arm, listened with as forbidding an expression as she could command to further arguments on the subject of secret marriages.

"It's no use," she said at last "I mustn't listen. It's wicked. I am surprised at you, Peter. You must never speak to me on the subject again."

She put her head on his shoulder, and Mr. Truefitt, getting a better grip with his arm, drew her toward him.

"Think it over," he whispered, and bent and kissed her.

"Never," was the reply.

Mr. Truefitt kissed her again, and was about to repeat the performance when she started up with a faint scream, and, pushing him away, darted from the summer-house and fled up the garden. Mr. Truefitt, red with wrath, stood his ground and stared ferociously at the shrunken figure of Captain Sellers standing behind the little gate in the fence that gave on to the foreshore. The captain, with a cheery smile, lifted the latch and entered the garden.

"I picked a little bunch o' flowers for Miss Willett," he said, advancing and placing them on the table.

"Who told you to come into my garden?" shouted the angry Mr. Truefitt.

"Yes, all of 'em," said Captain Sellers, taking up the bunch and looking at them. "Smell!"

He thrust the bunch into the other's face, and withdrawing it plunged his own face into it with rapturous sniffs. Mr. Truefitt, his nose decorated with pollen ravished from a huge lily, eyed him murderously.

"Get out of my garden," he said, with an imperious wave of his hand.

"I can't hear what you say," said the captain, following the direction of the other's hand and stepping outside. "Sometimes I think my deafness gets worse. It's a great deprivation.''

"Is it?" said Mr. Truefitt. He made a funnel of both hands and bent to the old man's willing ear.

"You're an artful, interfering, prying, inquisitive old busybody," he bellowed. "Can you hear that?"

"Say it again," said the captain, his old eyes snapping.

Mr. Truefitt complied.

"I didn't quite catch the last word," said the captain.

"Busybody!" yelled Mr. Truefitt. "Busybody! B—u—s–"

"I heard," said Captain Sellers, with sudden and alarming dignity. "Take your coat off."

"Get out of my garden," responded Mr. Truefitt, briefly.

"Take your coat off," repeated Captain Sellers, sternly. He removed his own after a little trouble, and rolling back his shirt sleeves stood regarding with some pride a pair of yellow, skinny old arms. Then he clenched his fists, and, with an agility astonishing in a man of his years, indulged in a series of galvanic little hops in front of the astounded Peter Truefitt.

"Put your hands up!" he screamed. "Put 'em up, you tailor's dummy! Put 'em up, you Dutchman!"

"Go out of my garden," repeated the marvelling Mr. Truefitt. "Go home and have some gruel and go to bed!"

Captain Sellers paid no heed. Still performing marvellous things with his feet, he ducked his head over one shoulder, feinted with his left at Mr. Truefitt's face, and struck with his right somewhere near the centre of his opponent's waistcoat. Mr. Truefitt, still gazing at him open-mouthed, retreated backward, and, just as the captain's parchment-like fist struck him a second time, tripped over a water-can that had been left in the path and fell heavily on his back in a flower-bed.

"Time!" cried Captain Sellers, breathlessly, and pulled out a big silver watch to consult, as Miss Willett came hurrying down the garden, followed by Mrs. Chinnery.

"Peter!" wailed Miss Willett, going on her knees and raising his head. "Oh, Peter!"

"Has he hurt you?" inquired Mrs. Chinnery, stooping.

"No; I'm a bit shaken," said Mr. Truefitt, crossly. "I fell over that bla—blessed water-can. Take that old marionette away. I'm afraid to touch him for fear he'll fall to pieces."

"Time!" panted Captain Sellers, stowing his watch away and resuming his prancing. "Come on! Lively with it!"

Miss Willett uttered a faint scream and thrust her hand out.

"Lor' bless the man!" cried Mrs. Chinnery, regarding the old gentleman's antics with much amazement "Go away! Go away at once!"

"Time!" cried Captain Sellers.

She stepped forward, and her attitude was so threatening that Captain Sellers hesitated. Then he turned, and, picking up his coat, began to struggle into it.

"I hope it will be a lesson to him," he said, glaring at Mr. Truefitt, who had risen by this time and was feeling his back. "You see what comes of insulting an old sea-dog."

He turned and made his way to the gate, refusing with a wave of his hand Mrs. Chinnery's offer to help him down the three steps leading to the shore. With head erect and a springy step he gained his own garden, and even made a pretence of attending to a flower or two before sitting down. Then the deck-chair claimed him, and he lay, a limp bundle of aching old bones, until his housekeeper came down the garden to see what had happened to him.

CHAPTER XX

FOR the first week or two after Joan Hartley's return Mr. Robert Vyner went about in a state of gloomy amazement. Then, the first shock of surprise over, he began to look about him in search of reasons for a marriage so undesirable. A few casual words with Hartley at odd times only served to deepen the mystery, and he learned with growing astonishment of the chief clerk's ignorance of the whole affair. A faint suspicion, which he had at first dismissed as preposterous, persisted in recurring to him, and grew in strength every time the subject was mentioned between them. His spirits improved, and he began to speak of the matter so cheerfully that Hartley became convinced that everybody concerned had made far too much of ordinary attentions paid by an ordinary young man to a pretty girl. Misled by his son's behaviour, Mr. Vyner, senior, began to entertain the same view of the affair.

"Just a boyish admiration," he said to his wife, as they sat alone one evening. "All young men go through it at some time or other. It's a sort of—ha—vaccination, and the sooner they have it and get over it the better."

"He has quite got over it, I think," said Mrs. Vyner, slowly.

Mr. Vyner nodded. "Lack of opposition," he said, with a satisfied air. "Lack of visible opposition, at any rate. These cases require management. Many a marriage has been caused by the efforts made to prevent it."