One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
And the little one got in his blows at the gentleman, who
had to be hopping. Only, the worse the gentleman caught it,
the friendlier his countenance became. That was the wonder,
and that gave them the key. But it was deliciously near
to the real thing.
Dartrey and Skepsey shook hands.
‘And now, you fellows, you’re to know, that this is one of
the champions; and you take your lesson from him and thank
him,’ Dartrey said, as he turned on his heel to strike and
greet the flow from the house.
‘Dartrey come!’ Victor, Fenellan, Colney, had him by the
hand in turn. Pure sweetness of suddenly awakened joy sat
in Nataly’s eyes as she swam to welcome him, Nesta moved a
step, seemed hesitating, and she tripped forward. ‘Dear Captain
Dartrey!’
He did not say: ‘But what a change in you!’
‘It is blue-butterfly, all the same,’ Nataly spoke to his look.
Victor hurriedly pronounced the formal introduction between
the Hon. Dudley Sowerby and Captain Dartrey
Fenellan. The bronze face and the milky bowed to one another
ceremoniously; the latter faintly flushing.
‘So here you are at last,’ Victor said. ‘You stay with us.’
‘To-morrow or later, if you’ll have me. I go down to my
people to-night.’
‘But you stay in England now?’ Nataly’s voice wavered on
the question.
‘There’s a chance of my being off to Upper Burmah before
the week’s ended.’
‘Ah, dear, dear!’ sighed Fenellan; ‘and out of good comes
evil!—as grandfather Deucalion exclaimed, when he gallantly
handed up his dripping wife from the mud of the Deluge
waters. Do you mean to be running and Dewing it on for
ever, with only a nod for friends, Dart?’
‘Lord, Simmy, what a sound of home there is in your old
nonsense!’ Dartrey said.
His eyes of strong dark blue colour and the foreign swarthiness
of his brows and cheeks and neck mixed the familiar and the
strange, in the sight of the women who knew him.
The bill-broker’s fair-tressed young wife whispered of curiosity
concerning him to Nataly. He dressed like a sailor, he
stood like a soldier: and was he married? Yes, he was married.
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