The boy came. Him Harry Stride began volubly questioning, or rather trying to, for Harry Stride’s Zulu was defective. Sipuleni turned, puzzled and inquiring, to his other master.
“Oh, damn it! these silly devils don’t understand their own language. You go ahead, Robson.”
Robson did, and soon elicited that Ben Halse and his daughter had slept at Malimati en route for Ezulwini, just as he had told the other. He was enjoying the latter’s eagerness and uncertainty.
“Yes, I’d like to see old Halse again,” repeated Stride, when the boy had been dismissed. “He’s a thundering good old chap. I say, Robson, we don’t seem to be doing over-much here at present. Let’s take a ride over to Ezulwini for a day or two. What do you say?”
Robson was a big, burly north-countryman, and the very essence of good-nature. He shook his head and winked.
“Ye’d better go alone, lad, if your horse’ll carry you. And he won’t, I’m thinking, if you try to make him do it in a day and a half.”
“He’ll jolly well have to. I think I’ll start to-morrow. Sure you won’t come?”
Robson shook his head slowly.
“Dead cert.,” he answered. “I’d like to have a crack with Ben Halse; but Ezulwini’s rather too far to go to see—him. Fine girl that of his, ain’t she?”
“Rather. I can’t make out how she gets through life stuck up there in that out-of-the-way place.”