Then a diffident voice with an unmistakably
foreign accent made reply.
"Were you speaking to me?"
Glancing up in the direction of the voice, Hilary discovered a stranger
seated against the trunk of a willow on the high bank above her. She
started and coloured. She had forgotten Dick's wild man. She described
him later as the brownest man she had ever seen. His face was brown, the
lower part of it covered with a thick growth of brown beard. His eyes
were brown, surmounted by very bushy eyebrows. His hair was brown. His
hands were brown. His clothes were brown, and he was smoking what looked
like a brown clay pipe.
Hilary regained her self-possession almost at once. The diffidence of the
voice gave her assurance.
"I thought my cousin was there," she explained. "You are Dick's friend,
I think?"
The man on the bank smiled an affirmative, and Hilary remarked to herself
that he had splendid teeth.
"I am Dick's friend," he said, speaking slowly, as if learning the lesson
from her. There was a slight subdued twang in his utterance which
attracted Hilary immensely.
She nodded encouragingly to him.
"I am Dick's cousin," she said. "He will tell you all about me if you ask
him."
"I will certainly ask," the stranger said in his soft, foreign drawl.
"Don't forget!" called Hilary, as she splashed back into deep water. "And
tell him to bring you to dine on our house-boat at eight to-night! Bertie
and I will be delighted to see you.
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