VI
"I am," Mr. McDonald said, as the cigarette steamed, "the son of poor but honest parents. All my life I have been obliged to labor. You may say that my English is surprisingly pure, under such conditions. As a matter of fact, I educated myself at night, using a lantern in the top of my father's stable."
"I thought you said he was poor," Hutchins put in nastily. "How did he have a stable?"
"He kept a livery stable. Any points that are not clear I will explain afterward. Once the thread of a narrative is broken, it is difficult to resume, Miss Hutchins. Near us, in a large house, lived the lady of my heart."
"The pink tam-o'-shanter girl!" said Aggie. "I begin to understand."
"But," he added, "near us also lived a red-headed boy. She liked him very much, and even in the long-ago days I was fiercely jealous of him. It may surprise you to know that in those days I longed--fairly longed--for red hair and a red mustache."
"I hate to interrupt," said Hutchins; "but did he have a mustache as a boy?"
He ignored her. "We three grew up together. The girl is beautiful--you've probably noticed that--and amiable. The one thing I admire in a young woman is amiability. It would not, for instance, have occurred to her to isolate an entire party on the bosom of a northern and treacherous river out of pure temper."
"To think," said Aggie softly, "that she is just over there by the camp-fire! Don't you suppose, if she loves you, she senses your nearness?"
"That's it exactly," he replied in a gloomy voice, "if she loves me! But does she? In other words, has she come up the river to meet me or to meet my rival? She knows we are here. Both of us have written her. The presence of one or the other of us is the real reason for this excursion of hers. But again the question is--which?"
Here the match he was holding under the cigarette burned his fingers and he flung it overboard with a violent gesture.
"The detective, of course," said Tish. "I knew it from the beginning of your story."
"The detective," he assented. "You see his very profession attracts. There's an element of romance in it. I myself have kept on with my father and now run the--er--livery stable. My business is a handicap from a romantic point of view.