And he went thoughtfully. It was annoying this man cropping up like this at the eleventh hour. Nothing, he felt sure, would come of his interference, but it might disturb Margaret and the general harmony of to-morrow's proceedings.
Her wedding-day is a somewhat nervous time for a girl, under the best of circumstances, he supposed. And though Margaret was as little given to nerves as anyone he had ever met, the possibility of a public attempt to stop her wedding might be fairly calculated to upset her.
Feudal as were the laws of the island, he could hardly knock Pixley on the head, as would have happened in less anachronistic times. And so he went thoughtfully.
Margaret and Miss Penny were lying in long chairs on the verandah when he came over the green wall into the Red House garden, by the same gap as he had used that first morning when he came upon Margaret standing in the hedge.
They were resting from labours, joyful, but none the less tiring.
"Jock, we were just wanting you!" said Margaret, sitting up. "Have all the things come all right?"
"All come all right," and he wondered how she would take his next announcement. "In fact more came than we expected."
"I guess we can use it all," said Miss Penny. "You've no idea of the capacity of children. I know something about it, and these children are more expansible even than school-girls."
"I was surprised to meet a gentleman down there who says he has come across on purpose for the wedding."
"A gentleman--come for the wedding?" and both girls eyed him as pictured terriers greet the word "Rats!"
"Not really, Jock!" said Margaret, with a suspicion of dismay in her voice.
"Well, Charles Svendt anyway--as representing the old man, he says."
"But what has he come for, and how did he get to know?"
"I didn't ask him. It was quite enough to see him there. He says he's going to stop it,"--and Margaret's cheeks flamed,--"but I've assured him that he can't, and I'll take jolly good care that he doesn't, if I have to knock him on the head and drop him off the Coupée."
"It would be shameful of him if he tried," cried Miss Penny. "Just let me have a talk with him, Mr. Graeme, and I'll make him wish he'd never been born. He's really not such a bad sort, you know. Where is he?"