he remotest idea where my digs are."
And Graeme led him through the back fields among the tethered cows,
who stopped their slow chewing as they passed, and lay gazing after
them in blank astonishment, into the Avenue and so to the Bel-Air.
"I'll come round then a bit before eleven and we'll all go along
together," was Charles Svendt's parting word.
"Right! Au revoir!" and Graeme went home across the fields smiling
happily to himself.
XVII
When Graeme came swinging over the green dyke in the early morning,
with his towel round his neck and his two dogs racing in front, he
found the Seigneur sitting in a long chair in the verandah, with four
aristocratic dogs wandering about, who proceeded to intimate to Punch
and Scamp that they were rather low fisher-dogs and not of seigneurial
rank.
"Well, what about your would-be breaker of the peace?" asked the
Seigneur, with a smile.
"He's come to his senses. I was going to bring you word as soon as I
thought you'd be up. He's promised to be best man, and I'm hoping to
get him to play heavy father also and give the bride away."
"Capital!"
"He was very anxious last night to know what would have happened if,
as he put it, he'd persisted in playing mule and kicking up his heels
in church."
"We'd have tied his heels so that he couldn't kick much," said the
Seigneur, with his deep quizzical smile.
"That's what I told him. He seemed to think Sark a decidedly odd kind
of place. But he's getting to like it, and I've invited him to come
and visit us later on."
"That's all right as long as he behaves himself."
"Oh, he's a very decent chap. The only thing I had against him was
that he wanted to marry my wife."
"Then all the ways are smooth now?"
"All smooth now, thanks to your assistance!"
"Well, all happiness to you both!" said the Seigneur as he rose. "My
wife sends all good wishes"--for the Lady of the Manor lay sick in the
great house among the trees and he would not leave her.
XVIII
As Graeme proposed, they talk still of that wedding in Sark.
Everything went smoothly. The Vicar had coached himself, by wifely
tuition and much private repetition, into a certain familiarity with
the Wedding Service in English, but would still have been more at home
with it in French.
The church was more crowded than it had been within the memory of
woman. Margaret looked charming, and Miss Penny absolutely pretty.
Charles Svendt could hardly take his eyes o
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