Glancing up in the direction of the voice, Hilary discovered a stranger seated against the trunk of a willow on the high bank above her. She started and coloured. She had forgotten Dick's wild man. She described him later as the brownest man she had ever seen. His face was brown, the lower part of it covered with a thick growth of brown beard. His eyes were brown, surmounted by very bushy eyebrows. His hair was brown. His hands were brown. His clothes were brown, and he was smoking what looked like a brown clay pipe.
Hilary regained her self-possession almost at once. The diffidence of the voice gave her assurance.
"I thought my cousin was there," she explained. "You are Dick's friend, I think?"
The man on the bank smiled an affirmative, and Hilary remarked to herself that he had splendid teeth.
"I am Dick's friend," he said, speaking slowly, as if learning the lesson from her. There was a slight subdued twang in his utterance which attracted Hilary immensely.
"I am Dick's cousin," she said. "He will tell you all about me if you ask him."
"I will certainly ask," the stranger said in his soft, foreign drawl.
"Don't forget!" called Hilary, as she splashed back into deep water. "And tell him to bring you to dine on our house-boat at eight to-night! Bertie and I will be delighted to see you. We were meaning to send a formal invitation. But no one stands on ceremony on the river--or in it either," she laughed to herself as she swam away with swift, even strokes.
"I shouldn't have asked him in that way," she explained to her brother afterwards, "if he hadn't been rather shy. One must be nice to foreigners, and dear Dickie's society undiluted would bore me to extinction."
"I don't think we had better give him a knife at dinner," remarked Bertie. "I shouldn't like you to be scalped, darling. It would ruin your prospects. I suppose my only course would be to insist upon his marrying you forthwith."
"Bertie, you're a beast!" said his sister tersely.
"We have taken you at your word, you see," sang out Dick Culver from his punt. "I hope you haven't thought better of it by any chance, for my friend has been able to think of nothing else all day."
A slim white figure danced eagerly out of the tiny dining-saloon of the house-boat.