Chapter 16 - Page 2

Heathen Chinee without any Arcadia Mixture. He at once filled his pouch, and, pulling softly back to the house-boat, replaced the tin on the window, his bosom swelling with the pride of those who give presents. At the same moment a hand gripped him by the neck, and a girl, somewhere on deck, screamed.

Scrymgeour's captor, who was no other than the owner of the Heathen Chinee, dragged him fiercely into the house-boat and stormed at him for five minutes. My friend shuddered as he thought of the explanations to come when he was allowed to speak, and gradually he realized that he had been mistaken for someone else--apparently for some young blade who had been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the old gentleman's daughter. It will take an hour, thought Scrymgeour, to convince him that I am not that person, and another hour to explain why I am really here. Then the weak creature had an idea: "Might not the simplest plan be to say that his surmises are correct, promise to give his daughter up, and row away as quickly as possible?" He began to wonder if the girl was pretty; but saw it would hardly do to say that he reserved his defence until he could see her.

"I admit," he said, at last, "that I admire your daughter; but she spurned my advances, and we parted yesterday forever."

"Yesterday!"

"Or was it the day before?"

"Why, sir, I have caught you red-handed!"

"This is an accident," Scrymgeour explained, "and I promise never to speak to her again." Then he added, as an after-thought, "however painful that may be to me."

Before Scrymgeour returned to his dingy he had been told that he would be drowned if he came near that house-boat again. As he sculled away he had a glimpse of the flirting daughter, whom he described to me briefly as being of such engaging appearance that six yards was a trying distance to be away from her.

"Here," thought Scrymgeour that night over a pipe of the Mixture, "the affair ends; though I dare say the young lady will call me terrible names when she hears that I have personated her lover. I must take care to avoid the father now, for he will feel that I have been following him. Perhaps I should have made a clean breast of it; but I do loathe explanations."

Two days afterward Scrymgeour passed the father and daughter on the river. The lady said "Thank you" to him with her eyes, and, still more remarkable, the old gentleman bowed.

Scrymgeour thought it over. "She is grateful to me," he concluded, "for drawing away suspicion from the other man, but what can have made the father so amiable? Suppose she has not told him that I am an impostor, he should still look upon me as a villain; and if she has told him, he should be still more furious. It is curious, but no affair of mine."