On her words they rose; and while Sir James was struggling furiously to find words suitable to their tender years, they bade him a polite good night, and left the room.

Their departure was a relief; Sir James rose hastily to his feet and expressed his feelings without difficulty. Then he began to laugh. It was rather on the wrong side of his face; and the knowledge that he had been worsted in his own smoking-room, and that by two children, rankled. He was not used to being worsted, even in the heart of Africa, by much more ferocious creatures. But after sleeping on the matter, he perceived yet more clearly that they had him, as he phrased it, in a cleft stick; and he told his head-keeper that the Dangerfield children were allowed to fish his water.

CHAPTER XIII

AND AN APOLOGY

The vindication of their dignity filled the Twins with a cold undated triumph; but they enjoyed the liveliest satisfaction in being able to fish in well-stocked water, because the trout tempted their mother's faint appet.i.te.

She had grown stronger during the summer. She was not, indeed, definitely ill; she was not even definitely weak. But, a woman of spirit and intelligence, she was suffering from the wearisome emptiness of her life in the country. It was sapping her strength and energy; in it she would grow old long before her time. The Twins had been used to find her livelier and more spirited, keenly interested in their doings; and the change troubled them. Doctor Arbuthnot prescribed a tonic for her; and now and again, as in the matter of the peaches and now of the trout, they set themselves to procure some delicacy for her. But she made no real improvement; and the empty country life was poisoning the springs of her being.

Sir James had expected to be annoyed frequently by the sight and sound of the Twins on the bank of the stream. To his pleased surprise he neither saw nor heard them. For the most part they fished in the early morning and brought their catch home to tempt their mother's appet.i.te at breakfast. But if they did fish in the evening, one or the other acted as scout, watching Sir James' movements; and they kept out of his sight. They had gained their end; and their natural delicacy a.s.sured them that the sight of them could not be pleasant to Sir James. As the Terror phrased it:

"He must be pretty sick at getting a lesson; and there's no point in rubbing it in."

Then one evening (by no fault of theirs) he came upon them. Erebus was playing a big trout; and she had no thought of abandoning it to spare Sir James' feelings. Besides, if she had had such a thought, it was impracticable, since Mrs. Dangerfield had come with them.

He watched Erebus play her fish for two or three minutes; then it snapped the gut and was gone.

"Evidently you're no so good at fishing as blackmailing," said Sir James in a nasty carping tone, for the fact that they had worsted him still rankled in his heart.

"I catch more fish than you do, anyhow!" said Erebus with some heat; and she cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder.

Sir James turned to see what she had glanced at and found himself looking into the deep brown eyes of a very pretty woman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir James turned and found himself looking into the deep brown eyes of a very pretty woman.]

He had not seen her when he had come out of the bushes on to the scene of the struggle; he had been too deeply interested in it to remove his eyes from it; and she had watched it from behind him.

"This is Sir James Morgan, mother," said the Terror quickly.

Sir James raised his cap; Mrs. Dangerfield bowed, and said gratefully: "It was very good of you to give my children leave to fish."

"Oh--ah--yes--n-n-not at all," stammered Sir James, blushing faintly.

He was unused to women and found her presence confusing.

"Oh, but it was," said Mrs. Dangerfield. "And I'm seeing that they don't take an unfair advantage of your kindness, for they told me that, thanks to Mr. Glazebrook's netting his part of it, there are none too many fish in the stream."

"It's very good of you. B-b-but I don't mind how many they catch,"

said Sir James.

He shuffled his feet and gazed rather wildly round him, for he wished to remove himself swiftly from her disturbing presence. Yet he did not wish to; he found her voice as charming as her eyes.

Mrs. Dangerfield laughed gently, and said: "You would, if I let them catch as many as they'd like to."

"Are they as good fishermen as that?" said Sir James.

"Well, they've been fishing ever since they could handle a rod. They are supposed to empty the free water by Little Deeping Village every spring. So I limit them to three fish a day," said Mrs. Dangerfield; and there was a ring of motherly pride in her voice which pleased him.

"It's very good of you," said Sir James. He hesitated, shuffled his feet again, took a step to go; then looking rather earnestly at Mrs.

Dangerfield, he added in a rather uncertain voice: "I should like to stay and see how they do it. I might pick up a wrinkle or two."

"Of course. Why, it's your stream," she said.

He stayed, but he paid far more attention to Mrs. Dangerfield than to the fishing. Besides her charming eyes and delightful voice, her air of fragility made a strong appeal to his vigorous robustness. His first discomfort sternly vanquished, its place was taken by the keenest desire to remain in her presence. He not only stayed with them till the Twins had caught their three fish, but he walked nearly to Colet House with them, and at last bade them good-by with an air of the deepest reluctance. It can hardly be doubted that he had been smitten by an emotional lightning-stroke, as the French put it, or, as we more gently phrase it, that he had fallen in love at first sight.

As he walked back to the Grange he was regretting that he had not received the social advances of his neighbors with greater warmth. If, instead of staying firmly at home, he had been moving about among them, he would have met Mrs. Dangerfield earlier and by now be in a fortunate condition of meeting her often. It did not for a moment enter his mind that if he had met her stiffly in a drawing-room he might easily have failed to fall in love with her at all. He cudgeled his brains to find some way of meeting her again and meeting her often. He was to meet her quite soon without any effort on his part.

It is possible that Mrs. Dangerfield had observed that Sir James had been smitten by that emotional _coup de foudre_, for she was walking with a much brisker step and there was a warmer color in her cheeks.

After he had bidden them good-by and had turned back to the Grange, she said in a really cheerful tone:

"I expect Sir James finds it rather dull at the Grange after the exciting life he had in Africa."

"Rather!", said the Twins with one quickly a.s.senting voice.

She had not missed Sir James' sentence about the superiority of Erebus'

blackmailing to her fishing. But she knew the Twins far too well to ask them for an explanation of it before him. None the less it clung to her mind.

At supper therefore she said: "What did Sir James mean by calling you a blackmailer, Erebus?"

The Terror knew from her tone that she was resolved to have the explanation; and he said suavely:

"Oh, it was about the fishing."

"How--about the fishing?" said Mrs. Dangerfield quickly.

"Well, he didn't want to give us leave. In fact he never answered our letter asking for it," said the Terror.

"And of course we couldn't stand that; and we had to make him," said Erebus sternly.

"Make him? How did you make him?" said Mrs. Dangerfield.

The Terror told her.

Mrs. Dangerfield looked surprised and annoyed, but much less surprised and annoyed than the ordinary mother would have looked on learning that her offspring had blackmailed a complete stranger. She felt chiefly annoyed by the fact that the complete stranger they had chosen to blackmail should be Sir James.

"Then you did blackmail him," she said in a tone of dismay.

"He seemed to think that we were--like the Douglases used to," said the Terror in an amiable tone.

"But surely you knew that blackmailing is very wrong--very wrong, indeed," said Mrs. Dangerfield.

"Well, he _did_ seem to think so," said the Terror. "But we thought he was prejudiced; and we didn't take much notice of him."