Dick agreed readily, and as a matter of fact he lunched in Lewes with
Captain Arnutt that very day, thereby missing all the excitement over
Betty Murdoch's sprained ankle and Jan's clever rescue-work, but gaining
quite a good deal in other ways.




XV

JAN'S FIRST FIGHT


Dick Vaughan was away from home a good deal during the next few weeks,
and Jan and Finn often missed him, for his frequent visits to Nuthill
had been full of interest for them. It may be, too, that Jan's mistress
missed Dick Vaughan; but according to the Master, the young man was well
employed and by no means wasting his time. And Jan did have at least one
useful lesson in the week following Betty's accident on the Downs; and
it was a lesson which he never entirely forgot.

Jan was busily doing nothing in particular--"mucking about" as the
school-boys elegantly put it--in the little lane which forms a
right-of-way across the Downs, between the Nuthill orchard and the
westernmost of the Upcroft fields. Betty Murdoch was still nursing her
ankle; and, fast asleep in the hall beside her couch, Finn, the
wolfhound, was dreaming of a great kangaroo-hunt in which he and the
dingo bitch Warrigal were engaged in replenishing their Mount Desolation
larder. Suddenly Jan looked up, sniffing, from his idle play, and saw