CONDITIONAL.

“Another `whited sepulchre,’ Faugh!” said Hazel, dropping in disgust the two halves of the outwardly magnificent peach she had just broken open, but which within was a mass of squirming maggots.

“Try these,” said Dick Selmes, pulling down a bough of the tree, on which grew several, and holding it for her while she made a selection.

“I thought so,” she went on, rapidly breaking open and throwing away another, and then another. “No, I give it up. This is a bad year for peaches.”

The two were alone together among the fragrant boskiness of the fruit-laden garden. The midsummer day was hot and cloudless, yet just a puff of cool air every now and then, from the not very far distant Indian Ocean, redeemed it from downright sultriness. Birds piped and whistled away up among the leaves, but shy of showing themselves over much. There had been too much havoc wrought among their kind in defence of the fruit to encourage them to court human propinquity.

“How jolly this is!” went on Dick, looking around.

“Are you ever anything but jolly?” she asked.

“Oh yes! I can get the blues, I can tell you. For instance

“For instance when?” she repeated, as he broke off.

“For instance well, I don’t mind saying it. That time we left Haakdoornfontein I felt anything but jolly.”

“Yet Haakdoorn isn’t a wildly exciting place at the best of times. Ah, I see. You missed the hunting.”

This was exasperating. She was in a bright, mischievous, teasing mood, but oh how entrancing she looked, the lift of the heavily lashed eyelid, the little flash of white teeth in the bantering smile, the rich mantling of the sun-kissed, oval face.

“I missed you. Hazel, you know that perfectly well. And just think. I had you all to myself in those days, and here not. All these jokers who were here for Christmas well, I found them a bore, for that reason.”

Christmas had just past, and on and around it several people from far and near had been to spend it with the Waybridges; and of these visitors the bulk had been men and in proportion had seemed fully to appreciate Hazel’s attractions. Dick Selmes could not but own to himself that he had not enjoyed his Christmas over much, though he would not have let it be known for worlds.

“Hadn’t you enough of me all to yourself at Haakdoorn?” she said softly, but still with that mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

“As if that question requires any answer. Darling, you know I want you all to myself always all through our lives. You must have seen it. Haven’t you?”

“Perhaps. I won’t tease you any more now. But you must listen to me.” The girl had grown very grave now very earnest. Her eyes, dilated with varying emotions, were full upon his face, and the predominant emotion, was unqualified approval. “First of all, what would your father have to say?”

“The dad? Why, he’d be delighted, of course.”

“Yes, but would he? I’m not so sure. He has never heard of my existence, and would think you had been entrapped by some nobody in the course of your travels ” Here a slight wave of colour had come over her face. “Now, I won’t have that thought of me, or said by any one.”

“But, Hazel darling,” he pleaded eagerly, “I think you are setting up a kind of er bogey. The old dad is the dearest old chap in the world, and a jolly sight too good to me, and for me.”

She looked at him and softened. She liked him more more than ever for what he had just said. Perhaps she showed it.

“I can quite believe that,” she answered. “Still, it doesn’t alter what I say.”

His face fell. So blank was it that for a moment he felt positively miserable.

“But, Hazel dearest, don’t you care for me a little bit?”

Her heart went out to him.

“Dick, you know I am very fond of you,” she answered, adding to herself, “as who could help being?” “No no, not yet,” putting out a hand as he made a step forward.

“But now we are engaged,” he protested rapturously.

“We are not,” she answered, and his face fell again. “And the only condition on which we will be is the one I told you. Get your father’s consent.”

“It strikes me, Hazel, that you are forgetting I am not exactly under age. I am quite independent into the bargain.”

“All the more reason why I should refuse to be the means of bringing dissension between you. Why, it would be murderous absolutely murderous, after what you have told me. I am not forgetting either that you have a certain position.”

“Oh, hang the `position’!” cried Dick. “But you are very cool and er judicial over it all, Hazel. If you cared as much as I do.”

“Perhaps, dear, I am speaking and acting in your own interests,” answered the girl, softly. “I am setting you a test. It might be that when you get back home again something might transpire which would make you devoutly thankful to me for having refused to allow you to engage yourself to some little nobody whom you had found amusing in the course of your wanderings.”

“Hazel! Now you hurt me.”

He looked it. There was no doubt about it that his feelings were deeply wounded, but there was a dignity about the way in which he took it that appealed to her so powerfully as well-nigh to bring about her surrender there and then.

“I didn’t mean to, God knows,” she answered earnestly and more softly still. “But I am looking at things from a sheer common-sense standpoint. You are very brave and strong, Dick, but in one way, I believe I am stronger than you. I am only putting before you a little trial of strength, of endurance. Surely you won’t shrink from that?”

“Let us understand each other, Hazel,” he said gravely, all his boyish light-heartedness gone. “You won’t engage yourself to me until I get my father’s consent?”

“That’s it.”

“But you will, conditionally, on my getting it?”

She thought a minute.

“I will wait until you do get it, or it is refused. But, Dick, understand that this doesn’t bind you in the slightest degree.”

“Oh, but it does bind me. Whoever heard of a one-sided engagement?” some of his light-heartedness returning. “I’ll write to the dear old dad on the very first opportunity.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to go yourself than to write?”

“And leave you all that time? No no, Hazel. I’m not going to give you that chance of forgetting me.”

“Or yourself?” with a significant smile.

“Now you are repeating the offence, and I shan’t forgive you unless you give me just one k Oh, damn!”

The change of tone, the change of attitude were in keeping, and Dick found himself in a sort of “standing at attention” rigidity, as small Jacky Waybridge came lounging down the garden path, a catapult in his hand. We fear that Dick came near wishing he had left that unwelcome urchin to the sharks on a former occasion, but that in such case he himself would not now be here with Hazel.

“Been shooting any birds, Jacky?” said Dick. “Look. Just over there I saw a rare clump of mouse-birds light just now; over there, just this side of the mealie land.”

The spot indicated would take the small intruder fairly out of sight.

“No good, catapult’s broken.”

“Why don’t you go to the house and get another?”

“They’re all broken. Mr Selmes, couldn’t you mend it for me?”

“I’ll try. Let’s see. Ah, got a bit of reimpje about you?”

The youngster felt in his pockets.

“No, I haven’t,” he said.

“Well, you’d better cut away to the house and get one,” said Dick.

There is a modicum of cussedness, sometimes vague, sometimes more pronounced, inherent in most children.

This one had his share of it. He was fond of Hazel, and attached to his rescuer, yet there was something about the two which had aroused his infantile curiosity. When he saw them alone together which he did pretty frequently a sort of instinct to watch them would come uppermost in his unformed mind, and this was upon him now. So he said

“Never mind about the catapult, Mr Selmes. I’m tired. I’ll sit and talk to you and Hazel.”

“Well, what shall we talk about, Jacky?” said Dick, making a virtue of necessity.

“Oh, let’s go on talking about what you were talking about while I came.”

This was funny. The two looked at each other.

“But that wouldn’t interest you in the least, Jacky,” answered the girl. “In fact, you wouldn’t understand it.”

The sharp eyes of the youngster were full upon her face, and did not fail to notice that she changed colour slightly. When he himself had done something which he ought not to have done, and was taxed with it, he would change colour too; wherefore now he drew his own deductions. What could Hazel have been doing that came within that category?

“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t tell. No, I won’t.”

“Won’t tell?” repeated Hazel. “Won’t tell what, Jacky?”

“I won’t tell,” was all they could get out of him. Dick Selmes burst out laughing.

“Before you can `tell’ anything, kid, you must first of all have something to tell,” he said. “You’ve been talking a lot of bosh. Now, I think we’d better go in, for it must be getting on for dinner-time.” The two got up, and as they strolled along beneath the high quince hedge, hanging out round fruit, like the balls upon a Christmas tree, both hoped for an opportunity of at any rate satisfactorily closing their conversation. But it was not to be. That little wretch stuck to them like their shadow, nor did either want to inflame his curiosity by telling him positively to clear.

“Then it is to be conditional,” Dick said, just before they reached the door.

“That’s the word.”

“On the terms named?”

“Exactly on the terms named.”

“Good. I accept them except as to the one-sided part of the business.”

“That, too, I insist upon,” she answered, with a smile and a bright nod, as she left him.

Alone, for a brief space, Dick Selmes went over in his mind the interview, so untowardly and exasperatingly interrupted, and was obliged to admit to himself that his love and admiration for Hazel Brandon were, if possible, deepened and intensified. Her beauty and bright, sweetness of disposition had fascinated and captured him, but now he had awakened to the fact that she possessed a rare depth of character indeed. He knew now that she cared for him yes, and that very deeply; he had read it in the course of that interview by several unmistakable signs. Yet she had deliberately, and of set purpose insisted upon that conditional delay. It showed a worldly wisdom, a knowledge of human nature beyond his own, he was constrained to admit; and in every way it was creditable to her. Of the obstacle he made entirely light, for it was in reality no obstacle at all except for the period of waiting involved.

And over himself some change had come. What was it? He felt a gravity he had never felt before. The old, thistledown, light-hearted recklessness seemed to have left him. His mind, attuned to a new and set purpose, seemed to have altered, to have solidified. And yet, realising this development, he rejoiced in it. He would not have foregone it for the world. Henceforward his was a new being.