“They’d be bored to death in a week. Besides, I haven’t got any.”
“How strange!”
“Yes, isn’t it? But then, you see, I’ve never been to school, and am seldom away from home. So I have neither time nor opportunity to make them.”
“You are a problem,” he said, looking at her with a strange expression.
“Am I? Well, at any rate, now you know what to expect. But I don’t think you’ll get bored, because you have strong interests of your own.”
Denham was above uttering such a banality as that he could not get bored if she was there, but he felt it all the same. A problem he had called her. Yes, she was a problem indeed; and he would be surprised if she were not the most interesting one with which he had ever been faced.
“Look,” went on Verna, coming to a standstill and pointing with her light umzimbiti walking-stick. “That’s not bad for a view.”
They had emerged from the forest ravine and now stood on high ground. The plains swept away to a line of round-topped hills, whose slopes were intersected with similar forest-filled ravines to that behind them, making dark stripes upon the bright green of the slope. It was a lovely evening, and the sky was blue and cloudless.
“No; it’s beautiful,” he answered. “I came here that way, round the back of that range.”
“But that’s the way to Makanya. You didn’t come from Makanya?”