However the portent was sufficiently startling for the moment. Kwaka argued that a man who could make iron burn could doubtless (as he claimed) spoil the good looks of a True Believer by some other of his infernal arts, and therefore was a person whom it would be healthy to let alone. So he and his escort took themselves off into the forest as unobtrusively as might be.
But with Laura, Carter took another tone. "Look here, my dear," he said, "you simply must run across to the Canaries till things have simmered down again here. I don't want to alarm you, but it's quite on the cards that infernal old Mormon of a King may take it into his woolly head to be dangerous. You've had one taste of his quality already."
"Two," said the girl, and shuddered, "and he's sent my father presents and messages since. But I can't go away from Smooth River, at any rate till my father comes back. He left me in charge, you see."
"Which I think very improper of him. I don't believe in girls being mixed up in business matters, at any rate in West Africa, and I am sure K. O'Neill would be frightfully down on it--what are you laughing at? Laura, tell me one-time what you are sniggering about in that ridiculous way. Oh, I see. You think I have never seen Mr. K. and am talking through my hat. Well, my dear, if you had read fifty times over every letter that K. has written to Malla-Nulla factory during the last eighteen months, you would know that man and his likes and his dislikes, and his ambitions, and his cranks just about as accurately as I do. Anyway, I repeat, he'd hate to have you here in charge."
"Just remember that I don't agree with you one bit, Mr. Carter."
"Very well, Miss Slade, you can jolly well do the other thing. But take charge here I shall, and go to the Islands you must. There's a B. and A. boat due to call at Monk River the day but one after to-morrow. I'll send for our surf boat, and we'll take you there in style. Won't you have a ripping time of it at Las Palmas and up in the Monte! I wonder what the new hotel's like up there. And I say, Laura, go down to that farm at the bottom of the Caldera, and I bet you a new hat it takes you half an hour longer than my record time to get up again as far as Atalaya--Hullo, what's the matter now?"