“My dear Son,
“I am very ill. If you would see me alive, come. The messenger will guide you. I live forty miles out. Lose no time.
“Your affectionate father,
“H. Jervis.”
The letter was forty-eight hours old.
“Is the messenger here?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then call up the grey pony syce; tell him to take gram and a jule, and saddle the pony. I am going off into the interior. I must start in twenty minutes.”
The bearer blinked incredulously.
“I need not take you.” The bearer’s face expanded into a grin of intense relief. “I shall be away several days. Get out my riding kit, shove some clothes in a bag, and ask the cook to put up some bread and meat and things, and tell the coolie I will be ready very shortly.”
Then he sat down, drew his writing-case towards him, and began to write a note to Honor. Her first love letter—and strange, but true, his also. It was merely a few lines to say he had been most suddenly called away by his father, and hoped that he would be back within the week.