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Rh Mrs. Bartlett gave a little squeak which was her preliminary to speech.

“But I do not see why there may not be a duel yet, Kenneth,” she said. “Because they did not fight this morning&#8203;—&#8203;excellent crab, dear Diva, so good of you to ask us&#8203;—&#8203;there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a duel this afternoon. O dear me, and cold beef as well: I shall be quite stuffed. Depend upon it a man doesn’t take the trouble to write a challenge and all that, unless he means business.”

The Padre held up his hand. He felt that he was gradually growing to be the hero of the whole affair. He had certainly looked over the edge of numberless hollows in the sand-dunes with vivid anticipations of having a bullet whizz by him on each separate occasion. It behoved him to take a sublime line.

“My dear,” he said, “business is hardly a word to apply to murder. That within the last twenty-four hours there was the intention of fighting a duel, I don't deny. But something has decidedly happened which has averted that deplorable calamity. Peace and reconciliation is the result of it, and I have never seen two men so unaffectedly friendly.”

Diva got up and whirled round the table to get the port for the Padre, so pleased was she at a fresh idea coming to her while still dear Elizabeth was resting. She attributed it to the crab.

“We’ve all been on a false scent,” she said. “Peace and reconciliation happened before they went out to the sand-dunes at all. It happened at the station. They met at the station, you know. It is proved that Major Flint went there. Major wouldn’t send portmanteau off alone. And it’s proved that Captain Puffin went there