“Peter!” wailed Miss Willett, going on her knees and raising his head. “Oh, Peter!” “Has he hurt you?” inquired Mrs. Chinnery, stooping. “No; I’m a bit shaken,” said Mr. Truefitt, crossly. “I fell over that bla—blessed water-can. Take that old marionette away. I’m afraid to touch him for fear he’ll fall to pieces.” “Time!” panted Captain Sellers, stowing his watch away and resuming his prancing. “Come on! Lively with it!” Miss Willett uttered a faint scream and thrust her hand out. “Lor’ bless the man!” cried Mrs. Chinnery, regarding the old gentleman’s antics with much amazement “Go away! Go away at once!” “Time!” cried Captain Sellers. She stepped forward, and her attitude was so threatening that Captain Sellers hesitated. Then he turned, and, picking up his coat, began to struggle into it. “I hope it will be a lesson to him,” he said, glaring at Mr. Truefitt, who had risen by this time and was feeling his back. “You see what comes of insulting an old sea-dog.” He turned and made his way to the gate, refusing with a wave of his hand Mrs. Chinnery’s offer to help him down the three steps leading to the shore. With head erect and a springy step he gained his own garden, and even made a pretence of attending to a flower or two before sitting down. Then the deck-chair claimed him, and he lay, a limp bundle of aching old bones, until his housekeeper came down the garden to see what had happened to him. CHAPTER XX FOR the first week or two after Joan Hartley’s return Mr. Robert Vyner went about in a state of gloomy amazement. Then, the first shock of surprise over, he began to look about him in search of reasons for a marriage so undesirable. A few casual words with Hartley at odd times only served to deepen the mystery, and he learned with growing astonishment of the chief clerk’s ignorance of the whole affair. A faint suspicion, which he had at first dismissed as preposterous, persisted in recurring to him, and grew in strength every time the subject was mentioned between them. His spirits improved, and he began to speak of the matter so cheerfully that Hartley became convinced that everybody concerned had made far too much of ordinary attentions paid by an ordinary young man to a pretty girl. Misled by his son’s behaviour, Mr. Vyner, senior, began to entertain the same view of the affair. “Just a boyish admiration,” he said to his wife, as they sat alone one evening. “All young men go through it at some time or other. It’s a sort of—ha—vaccination, and the sooner they have it and get over it the better.” “He has quite got over it, I think,” said Mrs. Vyner, slowly. Mr. Vyner nodded. “Lack of opposition,” he said, with a satisfied air. “Lack of visible opposition, at any rate. These cases require management. Many a marriage has been caused by the efforts made to prevent it.”