“Good Lord, I’m too old to begin learning languages.”
“Not a bit of it,” I said. “I knew a man once—he must have been about your age, Major, an old Indian, too, only he had been a civilian—who had gone stone blind late in life. But he had a hobby for languages, and I’m blest if he hadn’t taken up this one among others. He had got hold of the Bible in Zulu, done up by missionaries of course, and began putting all sorts of grammar cases to me. I own he fairly stumped me. I told him I didn’t know anything of Biblical Zulu—had always found that in use at the kraals good enough. Then he had the crow over me. But you ought to have a try at it, certainly your nephew ought.”
“By Jove, I believe I will,” growled Falkner. “Only it’d be an infernal grind.”
“Not much more grind than punching a boy’s head because he can’t understand you,” I said, “especially when the weather’s hot; and far more profitable. Still I can rather enter into your feelings. The feeling of helplessness when we can’t make out what the other fellow is talking about is prone to engender irritability. I was not guiltless myself in that line when I first went up-country. You set to work. Miss Sewin was saying this evening that she intended to.”
“Oh was she?” growled Falkner again, with renewed interest, and the glance he gave me was not at all friendly, I thought.
“Well, you take my tip, Major, and then I don’t think you’ll at all regret coming here. No, by Jove, I don’t.”
“You don’t, eh? Well I’m getting up a first-rate garden certainly. And the shooting around here isn’t bad of its kind.”
I hugged myself, metaphorically. Less than ever, by the experiences of a few hours, did I wish these people to give up in disgust.