He never talks of any one but
you - I grow quite jealous sometimes. But, Dick, how did you get
into that boat?"
"By means of a tree with 'stickie-out' branches."
"Do you mean to say - "
"That, as I told you before, I dropped in, as it were."
"But supposing you had slipped?"
"But I didn't."
"And you can't swim a stroke!"
"Not that I know of."
"Oh, Dick! can you ever forgive me?"
"On three conditions."
"Well?"
"First, that you let me remember everything you said to me while we
were drifting down to the river."
"That depends, Dick. And the second?"
"The second lies in the fact that not far from the village of Down,
in Kent, there stands an old house - a quaint old place that is
badly in want of some one to live in it - an old house that is
lonely for a woman's sweet presence and gentle, busy hands, Lisbeth!"
"And the third?" she asked very softly.
"Surely you can guess that?"
"No, I can't, and, besides, there's Dorothy coming - and - oh, Dick!"
"Why, Auntie," exclaimed Dorothy, as she came up, "how red you are!
I knew you'd get sunburned, lying in that old boat without a parasol!
But, then, she will do it, Uncle Dick - oh, she will do it!"
VI
THE OUTLAW
Everybody knew old Jasper Trent, the Crimean Veteran who had helped
to beat the "Roosians and the Proosians," and who, so it was rumored,
had more wounds upon his worn, bent body than there were months in
the year.
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