He came home yet more interested in her, resolved yet more firmly to see more of her. With a natural simplicity he used his skill in woodcraft to compa.s.s his end, and availed himself of the covert afforded by the common to watch Colet House. Thanks to this simple device he was able to meet or overtake Mrs. Dangerfield, somewhere in the first half-mile of her afternoon walk.

They grew intimate quickly, thanks chiefly to his simple directness; and he found that his first impression that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, more even than he had wanted, in his enthusiastic youth, to shoot a black rhinoceros, was right. He had been making arrangements for another shooting expedition; but he perceived now very clearly, indeed, that it was his immediate duty to settle down in life, provide the Hall with a mistress, and do his duty by his estate and his neighbors.

He had had no experience of women; but his hunting had developed his instinct and he perceived that he must proceed very warily indeed, that to bring Mrs. Dangerfield over the boundary-line of friendship into the land of romance was the most difficult enterprise he had ever dreamed of. But he had a stout heart, the hunter's pertinacity, and a burning resolve to succeed.

He wanted all the help he could get; and he saw that the Twins would be useful friends in the matter. But did they chance on him walking with their mother, or at tea with her, they held politely but gloomily aloof. He must abate their hostility.

He contrived, therefore, to meet them on the common as they were starting one afternoon on an expedition, greeted them cheerfully, stopped and said: "I'm awfully sorry I gave you away the other day.

But I never saw your mother till I'd done it."

"Don't mention it," said the Terror with cold graciousness.

"So you ought to be," said Erebus.

"It's a pity you should lose your fishing. If I'd known how good you both were at it, I should have given you leave when I got your letter,"

said Sir James hypocritically. "But I was misinformed about you."

"It's worse that mother should lose the trout. She does hate butcher's meat so, and it is so difficult to get her to eat properly," said Erebus in a somewhat mollified tone.

"It's like that, is it?" said Sir James quickly; and an expression of deep concern filled his face.

"Yes, and she did eat those trout," said Erebus plaintively.

Sir James knitted his brow in frowning thought; and the Twins watched him with little hope in their faces. Of a sudden his brow grew smooth; and he said:

"Look here: you mayn't fish my water; but there's no reason why you shouldn't fish Glazebrook's. _I_ think that a man who nets his water loses all rights."

"Yes, he does," said the Terror firmly.

"Well, with one watching while the other fishes, it ought to be safe enough; and I'll stand the racket if you get prosecuted and fined. I want to take it out of that fellow Glazebrook--he's not a sportsman."

The Terror's face had brightened; but he said: "But how should we account for the fish we took home?"

"You can reckon them presents from me. They would be--practically--if I'm going to pay the fines," said Sir James.

The eyes of both the Twins danced: this was a fashion of dealing tenderly with exact.i.tude which appealed to them. The Terror himself could not have been more tender with it.

"That's a ripping idea!" said Erebus in a tone of the warmest approval.

The peace was thus concluded.

Having thus abated their hostility, Sir James spared no pains to win their good will. He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of chocolate. If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet House he entertained them with stories of the African forest which thrilled Mrs. Dangerfield even more than they thrilled them. But he won their hearts most by his sympathy with them in the matter of their mother's appet.i.te, and by joining them in little plots to obtain delicacies for her.

Having discovered how grateful it was to her, he lost no opportunity of taking the short cut to her heart by praising them. He laid himself out to be useful to her, to entertain and amuse her, trying to make for himself as large as possible a place in her life. She was not long discovering that he was in love with her; and the discovery came as a very pleasant shock. None of the neighbors, much less Captain Baster, who, during her stay at Colet House, had asked her to marry them, had attracted her so strongly as did Sir James. Even as her delicacy made the strongest appeal to his vigorous robustness, so his vigorous robustness made the strongest appeal to her delicacy.

But Little Deeping is a censorious place; and its gossips are the keener for having so few chances of plying their active tongues. When no less than four ladies had on four several occasions met Sir James and Mrs. Dangerfield walking together along the lanes, those tongues began to wag.

Then old Mrs. Blenkinsop, the childless widow of a Common Councilman of London, one morning met the Twins in the village. They greeted her politely and made to escape. But she was in the mood, her most constant mood, to babble. She stopped them, and with a knowing air, and even more offensive smile, said:

"So, young people, we're going to hear the sound of wedding bells very soon in Little Deeping, are we?"

Erebus merely scowled at her, for more than once she had talked about them; but the Terror, in a tone of somewhat perfunctory politeness, said:

"Are we?"

"I should have thought you would have known all about it," she said with a cackling little giggle. "Mind you tell me as soon as you're told: I want to be one of the first to congratulate your dear mother."

"What do you mean?" snapped the Terror with a disconcerting suddenness; and his eyes shone very bright and threatening in a steady glare into her own.

"Oh, nothing--nothing!" cried Mrs. Blenkinsop, fl.u.s.tered by his sternness. "Only seeing Sir James so much with your mother--But there--there's probably nothing in it--the Morgans always were rovers--one foot at sea and one on sh.o.r.e--I dare say he'll be in the middle of Africa before the week is out. Good morning--good morning."

With that she sprang, more lightly than she had sprung for years, into the grocer's shop.

The Twins looked after her with uneasy eyes, frowning. Then Erebus said: "Silly old idiot!"

The Terror said nothing; he walked on frowning. At last he broke out: "This won't do! We can't have these old idiots gossiping about Mum.

And it's a beastly nuisance: Sir James was making things so much more cheerful for her."

"But you don't think there's anything in what the old cat said? It would be perfectly horrid to have a stepfather!" cried Erebus in a panic.

The Terror walked on, frowning in deep thought.

"_Do_ you think there's anything in it?" cried Erebus.

"I dare say there is. Sir James is always about with Mum; and he's always very civil to us--people aren't generally," said the Terror.

"Oh, but we must stop it! We must stop it at once!" cried Erebus.

"Why must we?"

"It would be perfectly beastly having a step-father, I tell you!" cried Erebus fiercely.

"It isn't altogether what we like--there's Mum," said the Terror. "She does have a rotten time of it--always being hard up and never going anywhere. And, after all, we shouldn't mind Sir James when we got used to him."

"But we should! And look how we stopped the Cruncher!"

"Sir James isn't like the Cruncher--at all," said the Terror.

"All stepfathers are alike; and they're beastly!" cried Erebus.

"Now, it's no good your getting yourself obstinate about it," said the Terror firmly. "That won't be of any use at all, if they've made up their minds. But what's bothering me is what that old cat meant by saying that the Morgans were rovers."

Erebus' frown deepened as she knitted her brow over the cryptic utterance of Mrs. Blenkinsop. Then she said in a tone of considerable relief:

"She must have meant that he wasn't really in earnest about marrying Mum."

"Yes, that's what she did mean," growled the Terror. "And she'll go about telling everybody that he's only fooling."

"But I don't think he is. I don't think he would," said Erebus quickly.