‘I did,’ Harry Noel answered unconcernedly. ‘My father’s, or rather my mother’s. Her people have property there. We’re connected with Barbadoes, indeed. My mother’s family were Barbadian planters.’ At the word, Tom Dupuy almost jumped from his seat and brought his fist down heavily upon the groaning table. ‘They were?’ he cried inquiringly. ‘Barbadian planters? You don’t mean to say, then, Mr Noel, that some of your own people were really and truly born West Indians?’ ‘Why on earth should he want to get so very excited about it?’ Harry Noel thought to himself hastily. ‘What on earth can it matter to him whether my people were Barbadian planters or Billingsgate fishmongers?’—‘Yes, certainly, they were,’ he went on to Tom Dupuy with a placid smile of quiet amusement. ‘Though my mother was never in the island herself from the time she was a baby, I believe, still all her family were born and bred there, for some generations.—But why do you ask me? Did you know anything of her people—the Budleighs of the Wilderness?’ ‘No, no; I didn’t know anything of them,’ Tom Dupuy replied hurriedly, with a curious glance sideways at his uncle.—‘But, ’pon my honour, Uncle Theodore, it’s really a very singular thing, now one comes to think of it, that Mr Noel should happen to come himself, too, from a West Indian family.’ As Harry Noel happened that moment to be lifting his cup of coffee to his lips, he didn’t notice that Tom Dupuy was pointing most significantly to his own knuckles, and signalling to his uncle, with eyes and fingers, to observe Harry’s. And if he had, it isn’t probable that a Lincolnshire Noel would even have suspected the hidden meaning of those strange and odd-looking monkey-like antics. By-and-by, Harry rose from the table carelessly, and asked in a casual way whether Mr Dupuy would kindly excuse him; he wanted to go and pay a call which he felt he really mustn’t defer beyond the second day from his arrival in Trinidad. ‘You’ll take a mount?’ Mr Dupuy inquired hospitably. ‘You know, we never dream of walking out in these regions. All the horses in my stable are entirely at your disposal. How far did you propose going, Mr Noel? A letter of introduction you wish to deliver, I suppose, to the governor or somebody?’ Harry paused and hesitated for a second. Then he answered as politely as he was able: ‘No, not exactly a letter of introduction. I feel I mustn’t let the day pass without having paid my respects as early as possible to Mrs Hawthorn.’ Tom Dupuy nudged his uncle; but the elder planter had too much good manners to make any reply save to remark that one of his niggers would be ready to show Mr Noel the way to the district judge’s—ah—dwelling-place at Mulberry. As soon as Harry’s back was turned, however, Mr Tom Dupuy sank back incontinently on the dining-room sofa and exploded in a loud burst of boisterous laughter.