The hotel proprietor’s wife disappeared, bustling away to attend to the wants of this party of guests that was apt to swamp her entire menage. Tom hesitated about searching out the guide’s daughter alone. “Min” promised embarrassing possibilities to his mind.
“Jiminy! we’re up against it, I believe,” he thought. “They’ll all blame me, I suppose. I ought not to have gone to sleep night before last and missed sending those last telegrams from Janesburg.
“Father will say I wasn’t ‘tending to business properly. I wonder what I’d better do.”
Ruth suddenly reappeared. She had merely gone inside to get rid of her bag and assure Miss Cullam that there were some matters she and Tom had to attend to. Now she approached her chum’s brother with a question that excited and startled him.
“What under the sun could have made her act so, do you suppose, Tom?”
“That girl. She’s gone off with our guide and all.”
“Who do you mean? Jane Ann Hicks?”
“Goodness! I don’t understand Ann’s part in it, either. But she’s not the leading spirit, it is evident.”
“Who do you mean, then?” Tom demanded.