sail; you’ll see the Cove as soon as they do. Even if you don’t, they won’t land at once.”
“Suppose they did!”
“They won’t; we’ll put to in five minutes.”
Tom was the cheery one, the one with his wits about him; but then it was nothing to Tom. He would not go in with the curricle, though Daintree was as bent as a flurried man could be upon having the livery and the cockade in waiting on the quay. Tom, however, pointed out that the two ladies, their maid, and the driver were all the curricle could possibly hold; also that there was more to do at the bungalow than the other realised; but he promised to receive them in all his buttons, and in less than ten minutes the dazed man started both horses at a gallop down the Point Piper Road.
Tom heard him rattle out of earshot among the trees without audible mishap. He then ran back to the house, where Mrs. Fawcett was already beside herself in the kitchen; but Peggy had paused on the verandah with an anxious face.
“’Tis you should be wid ’m, Tom,” said she reproachfully.
“There wasn’t room, Peggy.”
“Room enough the one way. I take shame o’ ye for lettin’ the masther go alone in his haste.”
“Why?”
“’Tis thrown out an’ kilt he may be, on the way to meet his lady!”
“God forbid!” cried Tom—and the words came back to him next day.
