‘Did you speak to him?’

‘No.’

‘You avoided him?’

‘Aunty and I thought it best.  He landed . . . there was a crowd.’

Miss Goodwin interposed:  ‘You go to Harry’s hotel?’

‘Grandada is coming down to-morrow or next day,’ Janet prompted my aunt Dorothy.

‘If we could seek for a furnished house; Uberly would watch the luggage,’ Dorothy murmured in distress.

’Furnished houses, even rooms at hotels, are doubtful in the height of the season,’ Miss Goodwin remarked.  ’Last night I engaged the only decent set of rooms I could get, for friends of Harry’s who are coming.’

‘No wonder he was disappointed at seeing us—­he was expecting them!’ said Janet, smiling a little.

‘They are sure to come,’ said Miss Goodwin.

Near us a couple of yachtsmen were conversing.

‘Oh, he’ll be back in a day or two,’ one said.  ’When you ’ve once tasted that old boy, you can’t do without him.  I remember when I was a youngster—­it was in Lady Betty Bolton’s day; she married old Edbury, you know, first wife—­the Magnificent was then in his prime.  He spent his money in a week:  so he hired an eighty-ton schooner; he laid violent hands on a Jew, bagged him, lugged him on board, and sailed away.’

‘What the deuce did he want with a Jew?’ cried the other.

‘Oh, the Jew supplied cheques for a three months’ cruise in the Mediterranean, and came home, I heard, very good friends with his pirate.  That’s only one of dozens.’

The unconscious slaughterers laughed.

’On another occasion’—­I heard it said by the first speaker, as they swung round to parade the pier, and passed on narrating.

‘Not an hotel, if it is possible to avoid it,’ my aunt Dorothy, with heightened colour, urged Miss Goodwin.  They talked together.

‘Grandada is coming to you, Harry,’ Janet said.  ’He has business in London, or he would have been here now.  Our horses and carriages follow us:  everything you would like.  He does love you! he is very anxious.  I’m afraid his health is worse than he thinks.  Temple did not say your father was here, but grandada must have suspected it when he consented to our coming, and said he would follow us.  So that looks well perhaps.  He has been much quieter since your money was paid back to you.  If they should meet . . . no, I hope they will not:  grandada hates noise.  And, Harry, let me tell you:  it may be nothing:  if he questions you, do not take fire; just answer plainly:  I’m sure you understand.  One in a temper at a time I’m sure ’s enough:  you have only to be patient with him.  He has been going to London, to the City, seeing lawyers, bankers, brokers, and coming back muttering.  Ah! dear old man.  And when he ought to have peace!  Harry, the poor will regret him in a thousand places.  I write a great deal for him now, and I know how they will.  What are you looking at?’