"
Bertie St. Orme was a cripple, and spent every summer regularly upon the
river with his old manservant, nicknamed "the Badger."
"Oh, he is quite impossible!" Hilary declared. "Let's talk of something
else!"
"But he means to keep you to your word, eh?" her brother persisted. "How
will you get out of it?"
Hilary's face flushed more deeply, and she bit her lip.
"There won't be any getting out of it. Don't be silly! I am free."
"The end of the season!" teased Bertie. "That allows you--let's
see--four, five, six more weeks of freedom."
"Be quiet, if you don't want a drenching!" warned Hilary. "Besides," she
added, with inconsequent optimism, "anything may happen before then. Why,
I may even be married to a man I really like."
"Great Scotland, so you may!" chuckled her brother. "There's the wild man
that Dick has brought down here to tame before launching at society. He's
a great beast like a brown bear. He wouldn't be my taste, but that's a
detail."
"I hate fashionable men!" declared Hilary, with scarlet face. "I'd rather
marry a red Indian than one of these inane men about town."
"Ho! ho!" laughed Bertie. "Then Dick's wild man will be quite to your
taste. As soon as he leaves off worrying mutton-bones with his fingers
and teeth, we'll ask Dick to bring him to dine."
"You're perfectly disgusting!" said Hilary, digging her punt-pole into
the bed of the river with a vicious plunge.
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