"Don't go on, father. You know you do like me to visit the slums, and you do like the old women to come to tea. And perhaps, father, we might arrange for them to come in my absence. Marshall, my maid, knows them almost as well as I do; and on their day out from the workhouse they have nowhere to go, poor darlings, and they do so love their cup of tea and their chat with me, and to sit in a warm room and look at a bright fire."
Katherine paused abruptly; in the midst of her glowing picture she caught sight of her father's face.
"In your absence!" he said--"your absence! What does this mean?"
Katherine paused for a moment. Hunt jumped to his feet.
"I tell you," he said, "you are not to beat about the bush. You have got something at the back of your head. Out with it!"
"I have a very big thing," answered the girl--"the biggest thing in all my life; and there's no going back on it, father. There's no changing my mind. It's got to be done, and I am not prepared with any special reasons. You've got to bear it, daddy."
"What in all the world have I got to bear?"
"I am going out to South Africa, father, as special war correspondent to _The Snowball_."
Katherine made her announcement quietly after all. The beating about the bush had ceased. The blow had fallen with a vengeance! As she spoke she rose, and now she stood a foot or so away from her father, confronting him. Her long arms hung at her sides; her slim figure was drawn up to its fullest height; her eyes flashed defiance and resistance into the eyes of the old man. But the hard lips were no longer hard--they trembled. Hunt's face turned from red to white, and from white to red again, and then he put his hand with a sudden gesture over his heart, and sank into a chair.
"Wha--what did you say?" was his first remark.
Katherine repeated her intelligence. Then she said, after a pause,--
"Whom do you mean by 'we'? I cannot go with you."
"No; you must stay at home and look after the dollars. You were always a dear old daddy, and the dollars are necessary to our existence. I shall want a good few to take with me. 'We' means Miss Katherine Hepworth and myself."
"A girl I met at Lady Marsden's--a girl I am interested in. She is also going to Ladysmith, and I am going with her."