In the bewilderment of his mingled elation and anxieties, the young father did not know what to do for the moment, while recognising the urgent need for action.  He must go as soon as possible, of course; but he could not depart suddenly without a reason, and to give the reason would be to give himself away to Alice Urquhart.  Besides, a day’s outing had been planned on purpose for him; the possibilities in connection with it were enormous; and five days of his leave were unexpended still.  He must think it over.  He must have advice.  So, as a first instalment of duty, he scrawled a recklessly affectionate letter, full of gratitude to her who had been his good genius and the guardian angel of his boy.  He did not disguise his envy of the general merchant, whose vows of love could not have excelled in fervent expression the good wishes of the writer for the happiness of the betrothed pair.  He hoped to have the pleasure of seeing his dear old friend on the following day, or the day after that at latest; and he promised himself the satisfaction of squandering his saved pay on such a wedding present as would at least cover the cost of the bread and milk the boy had devoured at her expense.  Guthrie dropped his letter in the post-bag while they were calling to him that it was time to start.  And he turned the key of silence upon his secret until he could pour it into the right ear.

It was a wonder he did not pour it into Mary’s, for she drove him to Bundaboo, and nobody could have been more sympathetic than she.  She was the virtual mother of the family, who loved children, and she was not—­she could not be—­a husband-hunter; a sensible man in domestic difficulties could not have sought a wiser confidante.  Yet he resisted stubbornly all her gentle invitations to confide.  In the first place, he did not want to go with her in the pony-carriage, while Deb and Dalzell rode.  He did not like to see it taken for granted, as it seemed to be by all, that a sailor on horseback must necessarily make a fool of himself; the slight to his self-respect was enough to dull the edge of his joy in the general merchant’s proceedings—­for, as the reader will remember, he was still but three-and-twenty.

He had to weigh down the springs of a little basket thing no better than an invalid’s wheel-chair, and see the young exquisite, whom he could have tossed over his shoulder with one hand, show off feats of fancy horsemanship to make Deb’s dark eyes kindle.  Mr Pennycuick had carelessly asked Billy’s degenerate son to “school a bit” a creature which for weeks had not allowed a man upon his back, and had had no exercise beyond his voluntary scamperings about the paddock from which he had been brought, dancing with excitement and indignation.  All the stablemen had been required to get his bridle and saddle on; he now wheeled round and round in the large space left for him, while Claud Dalzell, in his London riding clothes, and with his air of a reigning prince, warily turned with him.  Guthrie Carey, in the waiting pony-carriage, had but one interest in the performance—­his hopeful anticipation of a fatal, or at least a ridiculous, result.