Pixley was very silent as they walked back along the road to the Red
House.
The ladies had tea ready on the verandah.
"Well, Charles," said Margaret, as he bowed before them, and Graeme
nodded and smiled reassuringly at her over his back, "I won't pretend
that I'm glad to see you. Why did you undertake so foolish an errand?"
"Perhaps Mr. Pixley could hardly help himself," said Miss Penny,
sympathising somewhat with the awkwardness of his position.
"That is so," he said, with a grateful glance at her. "You see, the
governor is crazy wild over this matter. It was only Sunday night he
heard of it. A friend of young Greatorex wrote him that he'd heard
your banns put up, and Greatorex congratulated the governor after
church, and the governor nearly had a fit. He came over to my place
like a whirlwind and practically ordered me to come across instanter
and stop it. I may say," he said, looking at Margaret, "I tried to
reason with him. I told him he must know that if you'd gone that
length I was out of it, and nothing he could do would alter matters.
But he would not hear a word. He simply raved until I promised to come
over by first boat and see what could be done."
"You've only done your duty, Mr. Pixley," said Miss Penny. "But you
simply can't stop it, so is it any good making any trouble? Put it on
the highest grounds. You have had warmer feelings for Meg than she
could reciprocate. You can possibly make some disturbance at her
wedding, which would be painful to her and utterly useless to
yourself. Is it worth while?"
"No, I'm dem--er--hanged if it is! I see I can do no good, and I'll be
hammered if I'll play dog in the manger, even to oblige the governor.
It's a disappointment to me, you know,"--he was looking at Miss
Penny's bright face, surcharged with deepest sympathy.
"Of course it is," she said gently. "But a strong man bears his
disappointments without wincing. I think you're acting nobly."
"Say, Graeme, will you have me as best man?"
"Delighted, my dear fellow. Miss Penny has been breaking her heart at
thought of having no partner at the ceremony."
"Right! Then we'll say no more about it. How did you all come to meet
here? Put-up job?"
"Not a bit of it," said Graeme. "Pure coincidence--or Providence,
we'll say. You remember that Whitefriars' dinner, when Adam Black sat
opposite to us? He was just back from Sark, and he said, 'If ever you
want relief from your fellows--try Sark.' Well, later on, I had no
reason to believe there was anything between you and Margaret, and I
called on your father at his office. He sliced me into scraps with his
eye-glass and flung the bits out into Lincoln's Inn,"--at which
Charles Svendt grinned amusedly, as though he were familiar with the
process.--"I wanted to get away somewhere to piece up again. Sark came
into my head, and I came. A month later my landlady told me she had
let my rooms to two ladies, as she had understood I was only stopping
for a month, and I had to turn out and come up here. And, to my vast
amazement, the two ladies proved to be Margaret and Miss Penny. How is
that for coincidence?"
"I was standing in the hedge there," said Margaret, "early in the
morning of the day after we got here, and Jock came leaping over the
dyke there with a great brown dog, and stopped as if he'd been shot--"
"I thought you were a ghost, you see."
"And I couldn't believe my eyes. Then I asked him what he meant by
following us here, and it turned out that it was we who had followed
him, and turned him out of his cottage moreover."
"Deuced odd!" said Charles Svendt, screwing in his eye-glass and
regarding them comprehensively. "Almost makes one believe in--er--"
"Telepathy and that kind of thing," said Miss Penny.
"Er--exactly--just so, don't you know!" and his glance rested on her
with appreciation as upon a kindred soul.