But you'll never rob me of that fellow, and so I promise you two, and
him. . . . Come along, Rover!"
NIGHT THE TWENTY-THIRD.
COUNTERCHASE.
I went to the South Pacific, after all.
Farrell called on me, next day, and before I could countermand my
passage. He came, as he said, to offer me his deep apologies.
"I grant you, Sir Roderick, that I behaved ill to you and Mr.
Collingwood, and specially to Miss Denistoun. I had no business to
drag her into the talk. . . . But I'm only a learner in the ways
gentlemen behave. It doesn't come to me by nature, as it comes to
luckier ones, whose parents and grandparents have bred it into the
bone. You may put it that I've hair on my hoof and have to shave it
carefully. What taking trouble can do I can make it do, and don't
count the time wasted. But it's the unexpected that catches out a
man like me. . . . You see, I came up thinking to find you alone: and
I was so keen to see you, I paid no attention to the dog, queerly as
he was behaving. I thought, maybe, he'd smelt a cat. There weren't
any cats on the island, or aboard the _I'll Away_, or the cars, or
the _Oceanic_.
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