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Oh, monstrous!

But what was to be done? Could he stalk into the midst of the party and raise a scene? The young men might laugh at him. . . . Even supposing he put them to rout, what next was he to do? He would find himself with those abandoned girls left on his hands. A pleasant tea-party, that! And Miss St. Maur might not be arriving for another hour. Could he spend all that time in lecturing them? Could he even trust himself to speak to Sophia? Dr. Clatworthy, still with his hands to his head, staggered down the steps and forth from the garden.

He had done with Sophia for ever! His first demand of a woman worthy to be his wife was that she should never have looked upon another man to make eyes at him, and he had distinctly seen (Oh, monstrous, monstrous, to be sure!). . . . He would go straight home and write Miss St. Maur a letter the like of which that lady had never received in her life.

With these terrible thoughts working in his head, the poor man had crossed a couple of fields on his way home when he looked up and saw Miss St. Maur herself coming towards him along the footpath over the knap of the hill.

“Dr. Clatworthy!” cried Miss St. Maur.

“Ma’am,” said Dr. Clatworthy.

“Why–why, wherever have you left dear Sophia and the rest of my charges?”

“At Merry-Garden, ma’am–and in various summer-houses, ma’am–and making free, ma’am, with a vicious soldiery!”

“But it is impossible!” cried Miss St. Maur when he had told his tale of horror. “I refuse to believe it. Indeed, sir, I can only think you have taken leave of your senses!”

“Come and see for yourself, ma’am,” said the doctor, cold as ice to look at, but with an inside like a furnace.

He was forced almost to a run to keep pace with Miss St. Maur: but at the steps leading up to the garden he made her promise him to go quiet, and the pair tiptoed up and through the verandah and peered around the laylock-bush.

“There!” cried Miss St. Maur, turning to him and pointing up the path with her parasol.

To and fro along the path a party of young ladies was strolling disconsolate. They walked in pairs, to be sure: and the hum of their voices reached to the laylock-bush as they bent and discussed the flowers in Aunt Barbree’s border. Not a uniform, not a man, was in sight.

“There!” said Miss St. Maur. “There, sir! What did I tell you?”

VII.

The cause of it all was Nandy. Nandy had found a nice out-of-the-way corner of the foreshore, with a patch of mud above the water’s edge, and, after a good roll in it (it was a trifle smellier than the baths at Hi-jeen Villa, but nothing amiss), had waded out into the tide for a thorough wash. He was standing in water up to his armpits and rinsing the mud out of his hair, when, happening to glance shorewards, he caught a glimpse of scarlet, and rubbed his eyes to see a red-coated soldier standing on the beach and overhauling his clothes, which he had left there in a heap.

“Hi!” sang out Nandy. “You leave those clothes alone: they’re mine!”

The soldier put up a hand and seemed to be beckoning, cautious-like.

Nandy waded nearer. “Looky-here, lobster–none of your tricks!” he said. “They-there clothes belong to me.”

“I ain’t goin’ to be a lobster, as you put it, much longer,” said the soldier. “I’m a-goin’ to cast my shell.” And with that he begins to unbutton his tunic. “If you try to interfere, young man, I’ll wring your neck; and if you cry out, I carry a pistol upon me–” and sure enough he pulled a pistol from his pocket and laid it on the stones between his feet. “I’m a desperate man,” he said.