"Don't wait any longer, Carew.Really, it's not worth while.""Too late for us to part company now," Carew answered serenely.
"I know.You've stood by me like a good fellow; but it will be some time yet before I can sail.And you know you are in a hurry to get away.""Don't be too sure of that," Carew advised him."All my good things aren't at one end of the world."Weldon's lips curled into the ghost of his old smile.
"Then take one of them along with you," he suggested.
Elbows on knees and chin on fists joined knuckle to knuckle, Carew turned and smiled blandly down at the face on the pillow.
"Weldon, for a man who has been off his head for a month, you do have singularly wise ideas.But do you suppose she'd go?""Which?"
"Miss Mellen, of course.It's a question of ages.Young Mahomet is easier to move than the everlasting hills.""Meaning your mother? She would thank you." "She will thank me, when she sees Alice," Carew responded hopefully."But, honor bright, do you suppose Miss Mellen would go back with me?""I thought she promised."
"Yes, but now," Carew persisted, with the eagerness of a boy."Right off, next month.""There's only one way to tell; ask her," Weldon answered."If she is the girl I think she is, she will say yes.""You do like her; don't you, Weldon?" The eagerness was still in his tone.
"Intensely," Weldon replied quietly."I have seen few women I have liked as well.""What larks we'll be having, this time next year, talking it all over together," Carew said, in a sudden, thoughtful burst of prophecy."By the time we get home, we shall forget the blood and the dog-biscuit, and only remember the skittles and beer.If only--""What?" Weldon looked up at him without flinching.
Carew did flinch, however.
"Nothing," he said hastily."One is never quite content, you know."Weldon drew a deep, slow breath.
"No," he echoed."One is never quite content."Carew crossed his legs, as he settled back in his chair.
"Mayhap.Some of us ought to be, though.""Yes.You're a lucky fellow, Carew."
"So are you.The trouble is, one never knows when he is well off.""But we all know when we aren't," Weldon replied succinctly.
Carew's glance was expressive, as it roved about the luxurious room, with the bed drawn up near the window which looked out, between the branches of an ancient oak tree, on the blue waters of Table Bay and on the fringe of shipping by the Docks far to the eastward.Faintly from the room below came the sound of a piano and of a hushed girlish voice singing softly to itself.
"It all depends on one's point of view," Carew said, after an interval."I am living in a seven-by-nine room in a hotel, and Miss Mellen is seventy-two miles and three quarters away.Weldon, you are a lucky dog, if you did but know it."Weldon shut his teeth for a moment.Then he said quietly,--"Carew, it is five weeks that I have been in this house.Mr.Dent and dear little Mother Dent have been angel-good to me.Miss Dent--"He hesitated.
"Has been an archangel?" Carew supplemented calmly.
"Has never once come into my sight."
Deliberately, forcefully, the next words dropped from Carew's tongue."The--devil--she--hasn't!""No."
Then Weldon waited for Carew to speak; but Carew merely sat and stared at his friend in speechless stupefaction.
"Oh, Lord!" he blurted out at last."Then you haven't made it up?""There was nothing to make up," Weldon said drearily.
Again Carew's elbows came down on his knees with a bump.
"There was, too!" he contradicted, with an explosiveness which irresistibly reminded Weldon of their kindergarten days.
"What makes you think so?"
"I don't think.I know."
"How do you know?" Weldon asked listlessly.
"Alice Mellen told me," Carew replied conclusively.
"Told you what?"
"That Cooee Dent is in love with you."
From his superior knowledge, Weldon stared disdainfully up at him.
"Then there is one thing that Alice Mellen doesn't know.""She does, then.She told me about it, when you went off on your feed, up at Lindley," Carew explained hurriedly."I was worried about you, and she was worried about Miss Dent, and we compared notes.You hadn't said a word of any kind; we could only guess at things, so we wrote to each other about it.She told me then about Miss Dent's dashing up to Johannesburg after Vlaakfontein.""She went to see her cousin."
"She also went to see you."
Carew's emphatic pause was broken by the coming of the nurse, who bent over the bed, raising her brows inquiringly, as she laid two fingers on Weldon's wrist.Carew took the obvious hint.
"I hope I've not stopped too long," he said, as he rose."It has been good to see Mr.Weldon.May I come again?"The nurse was a true woman.Therefore she smiled back into his happy, handsome face.
"I think you may," she answered."Mr.Weldon is tired now, but you evidently have done him good."Carew meditated aloud, as he went away down the walk.
"Out of every five women, three are cats," he observed tranquilly to himself."I've cornered the fourth.It remains to be seen whether Weldon is cornered by the fifth, or only the third.Hasn't been to see him! Little beast! But I'll bet any amount of gold money that she has done endless messing for him on the sly."Carew's words showed that it is usually not the man in love with a woman who is the shrewdest judge of the hidden recesses of that woman's nature.The fact was, Ethel had slaved unceasingly, but unseen, for the patient above stairs.See him she would not.Day after day, she invented fresh excuses to ward off her mother's suggestions of a call on the invalid; but also, day by day, she invented fresh delicacies to tempt the appetite dulled by months of army biscuit and bully beef.And, meanwhile, she was waiting.
