Graeme's two minutes were each set with considerably more than the
regulation sixty seconds--diamond seconds of glowing anticipation,
every one of them. And, to his credit, be it recorded that he allotted
several of them to the invocation of most fervent blessings on Miss
Penny, who, at the moment, was vigorously disclaiming any pretension
thereto.
But, quite soon enough for his hosts, as he considered them,--his
guests, according to Miss Penny,--he appeared at the cottage, bodily
and mentally prepared for the feast, and showing both in manner and
attire due sense of the honour conferred upon him.
It was a festive, and for one of them at all events, a
never-to-be-forgotten meal. The strong Sark air had got into all their
heads, and whatever prudish notions might have been working in
Margaret, she had bidden them to heel and took her pleasure as it
came.
Her mood, however, for the moment was receptive rather than
expressive. Miss Penny and Graeme still did most of the talking, and
Margaret sat and listened and laughed, not a little astonished at
finding herself in that galley.
"What is the penalty for aiding and abetting a criminal in an evasion
of the law, Mr. Graeme?" chirped Miss Penny one time, and took
Margaret's energetic below-table expostulation without a wince.
"It would depend, I should say, on the particular dye of criminal.
What has your friend been up to, Miss Penny? Is he a particularly
black specimen?"
"In the first place he's a she, and in the next place her complexion
has a decided tendency towards blonde. As to dye--I am in a position
to state on oath that she does not."
For a moment he was mystified, then his eye fell on Margaret's face,
full of glorious confusion at this base betrayal by her bosom friend.
"The Sark air does get into people's heads like that at times," he
said diplomatically. "It's just in the first few days. But you soon
get used to it. I felt just the same myself--losing faith in things
and thinking ill of my friends, and so on. You'll be quite all right
in a day or two, Miss Penny,"--with a touch of sympathetic
commiseration in his voice.
"Oh, I'm quite all right now," said Miss Penny enjoyably. "I thought
it only right and proper to let you know where you stand. At the
present moment you are as likely as not aiding and abetting a breaker
of the British laws and her accomplice. You may become involved in
serious complications, you see."
"If that means that I can be of any service in the matter I shall be
only too delighted,--if you will not look upon me as an intruder." He
spoke to Miss Penny but looked at Margaret.
"Ah-ha! Qualms of conscience----"
"Hennie is a little raised, Mr. Graeme," broke in Margaret. "Please
excuse her. A good night's rest will make her all right."
"Never felt better in my life," sparkled Miss Penny. "But seriously,
Mr. Graeme, it is only right you should understand, for we don't quite
know where we are ourselves, and I'm going to tell you even though
Margaret kicks all the skin off my leg in the process. In a
word,--we've bolted."
"Bolted?" he echoed, all aglow with hopeful interest.
"Yes--from Mr. Pixley and all his works. And as he had been
threatening to make us a Ward of Court, you see--well, there you are,
don't you know."
"I see," he said, and there was a new light in his eyes as he looked
at Margaret, and his soul danced within him again as David's before
the Ark.
"For reasons which seemed adequate to myself, Mr. Graeme,"--began
Margaret, in more sober explanation.
"They were, they were. I am sure of it," sang his heart. And his brain
asked eagerly, "Had Charles Svendt anything to do with it, I wonder?"
"--I thought it well to remove myself from the care of my guardian
Mr. Pixley----"
"Splendid girl! Splendid girl!" sang his heart.
"--And as I have still some of my time to serve----"
"How long, O Lord, how long?" chaunted his heart, with no sense of
impropriety, for it was sounding pæans of joyful hope.
"--You see----" said Margaret.
"I see."
"Do you think they could make me go back to him?" she asked anxiously.
"To Mr. Pixley? Certainly not--that is if your reasons for leaving him
seemed adequate to the Court, as I am sure they would."
She offered no explanation on this point. All that she left unsaid,
and that he would have given much to hear, seemed dancing just inside
Miss Penny's sparkling eyes, and as like as not to come dancing out at
any moment.
"You see," said Graeme, "I happen to have been making some enquiries
from a legal friend on that very point----"
"Oh!" said Margaret, and Miss Penny's eyes danced carmagnoles.
"In connection with a story, you know. One likes to get one's legal
points all right. In any case, as I was just about to tell Miss Penny
for the benefit of her criminal friend, there would be lots of red
tape to unwind before they could do anything, and this little isle of
Sark is the quaintest place in the world in the matter of its own old
observances and their integrity, and the rejection of new ideas. Mr.
Pixley does not know you are here, of course?"
"Not much, or he'd have been over by special boat long since," said
Miss Penny. "We managed it splendidly."
"And how long?" began Graeme, in pursuance of his train of thought,
but stopped short at sound of the words, since they bore distant
resemblance to a curiosity which seemed to himself impertinent.
But Miss Penny knew no such compunctions. She did not want to miss one
jot or tittle of her enjoyment of the situation.
"About six months," said she quickly.
"Well, I should think we"--how delightful to him that "we," and how
Miss Penny rejoiced in it!--"could hold them at bay for that length of
time. The machinery of the law is slow and cumbersome at best, and in
this case, I imagine, it would not be difficult to put a few
additional spokes in its wheels."
If his face was anything to go by there were many more questions he
would have liked to put--judicial questions, you understand, for a
fuller comprehension of the case. But he would not venture them yet.
He had got ample food for reflection for the moment, and his hopes
stood high.
Never for him had there been a dinner equal to that one. Better ones
he had partaken of in plenty. But the full board and the quality of
the faring are not the only things, nor by any means the chief things,
that go to the making of a feast.
The nearest approach to it had been that dinner with the Whitefriars,
at which he first met Margaret Brandt, and that did not come within
measurable distance of this one.