"I thought it was holiday time? Well, yes, they are."
She had been looking at him ever since he came, and at last he noticed it.
"Do I look well?" he asked in joke.
"You know, it's rather a pleasure to look at you," she replied. "I've been feeling so shut in," and she pushed her hair back from her forehead, and glanced at him with a bright smile. "And it's really going well?"
"So well," he nodded, "that everything's quiet, and the preparations well ahead. In three months" (and his enthusiasm began to get hold of him) "I shall be off; in two more I hope to be actually there, and then—why, forward!"
She had listened at first with sparkling eyes; as he finished, her lips drooped, and she leant back in her chair. There was a moment's silence; then she said in a low voice,
"Three months!"
"It oughtn't to take more than two, if Jackson has arranged things properly for me."
Evidently he was thinking of his march up country; but it was the first three mouths that were in her mind. She had longed to see the thing really started, hastened by all her efforts the hour that was to set him at work, and dreamt of the day when he should set foot in Omofaga. Now all this seemed assured, imminent, almost present; yet there was no exultation in her tone.
"I meant, before you started," she said slowly.