Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 3

exclaimed Amaryllis.
"Yes," said Sir Randal. "That was the first time I ever heard the name
he is known by from Söul to Zanzibar, from Alaska to Honolulu."
"Why do they call him that?" asked the girl.
The man smiled. "Because he has a limp," he said. "But how he came
by it is more than I can tell you. I told the fellow that I had indeed a
young brother Richard, and that my young brother Richard certainly
had a limp. We were saved the trouble of further description by the
interruption of a high-pitched voice:
"'Not a shade shy of six foot tall; shoulders like Georgees Carpenteer's
when he's pleased with life in the movies; hair black as a Crow Injun's;
eyes blue as a hummin' bird's weskit; and a grip--wa-al, he don't wear
no velvet gloves: Limpin' Dick Bellamy!'
"'That's him,' said the queer man. I agreed that the portrait was
unmistakable, and asked if either of them could tell me where he was
now, as I hadn't seen him for a long time. So the queer man told me that
two years before Dick, who was then overseer of a large rubber
plantation north of Banjermassin in Borneo, had given him a job. He
added, however, that my brother had left Borneo some six months later.
The American had first met him four years before in Bombay, and they
had joined forces in a pearl-fishing expedition which took them
somewhere in the Persian Gulf--the Bahr-el--Bahr-el-Benat Islands, I
think; they had separated four months later and had not met again for
more than three years, when the American had run across him as part

owner of a cattle ranch in Southern Paraguay."
Amaryllis was interested in spite of herself; but her father had heard
these things before, and was thinking of others.
"Jack-of-all-trades," he said, turning towards the house.
"And master of most," called Bellamy after him.
"What a good brother you are!" said Amaryllis softly.
"He's all the family I've got, Amaryllis," he said. "Besides, I'm almost
old enough to be his father, and I often feel as if I were."
"From what you've told me, he must be thirty at least," objected the girl,
"and I'm sure you're not fifty."
"Over," said Bellamy.
"You don't look it," she answered.
"Thank you."
"What for?"
"You make it easier."
"What easier?"
"What I'm going to say to you."
Amaryllis looked up, surprised.
"Before I met you, Miss Caldegard, I had got thoroughly into the way
of thinking of myself not as an elderly man, but as a confirmed
bachelor. For more than a month I have been enjoying your company
and admiring your goodness and beauty more and more every day,
without perceiving, until some few days ago, that I did so at great risk
to myself. If I were twenty years younger I should put off speaking like

this, in the hope of gaining ground by a longer association with you.
But to-day I have made up my mind that my best chance of winning at
least your affection lies in telling you simply and at once how
completely you have conquered mine."
That this must come sometime, Amaryllis no doubt had foreseen; yet at
this moment she felt as much surprised and embarrassed as if she had
never read the signs.
If a woman, mother or sister, could have asked her yesterday whether
she were willing to marry Randal Bellamy, she might, perhaps, have
answered that she liked him awfully, that she valued his love, and felt
very sure of being happier as his wife than as an old maid; but now,
with the famous lawyer's kind and handsome face before her, and that
pleading note mixing unexpectedly with the splendid tones of his voice,
her delicacy rebelled against taking so much more than she could give.
Twice she tried to speak; but, instead of words to her tongue, there
came a tiresome lump in her throat and a horrid swimminess over her
eyes which she was determined should not culminate in tears.
"What a dear you are, Sir Randal!" she said huskily. "But--but--oh! I do
like you most awfully, but--I can't say what I mean."
The new beauty in the face which he had from the first thought so
lovely, the new brightness of tears in the dark-brown eyes, and the
womanly tenderness which he had never before found in her voice,
made his heart quicken as never since he was thirty. That extra beat, if
it told him that he was still young, warned him also of the pain which is
the tribute imposed on conquered youth.
But before he found words, Caldegard appeared on the terrace,
shouting that it was five minutes past one, and lunch waiting.
The pair walked side by side to