“Which way shall we go?” said Hazel. “Shall we ride over to Komgha?”
“I vote we go bang in the other direction,” answered Dick Selmes. “The township’s all clatter and dust—and altogether abominable. Mrs Waybridge was an angel of light when she cropped up and dragged me out of it.”
“Yes, you wanted some dragging, didn’t you?” was the somewhat mischievous rejoinder.
“As if I knew. Good Lord! what a narrow thing it was. And there I was, cudgelling my muddy brains for some excuse, because I thought you were staying in the town.”
The two were on horseback. They had started off for an afternoon ride together, all undecided as to where they should go. But there was one place Dick Selmes was resolved they should not go to—unless Hazel particularly wanted to, and somehow he did not think she would—and that was the township. It was full of his own sex, and he wanted the girl all to himself, to-day at any rate. He had a lively recollection of the Christmas gathering which he had not enjoyed, for the reason that then he never could get her all to himself. He had voted them a set of unmitigated bores, and, rare thing indeed with him, had become almost irritable. Yet if ever any one was what is known as a “man’s man,” that was Dick Selmes. Given the absence of Hazel on that festive occasion, he would have voted them all thundering good fellows. But—circumstances alter cases.
Since the understanding of that morning, and the compact entered into between them, a more restful feeling had come over these two; a feeling as though they belonged to each other; and though some patience was needed, at any rate there was an end to uncertainty.
“We might go round by old Umjuza’s kraal and Sampson’s store,” suggested Dick, “unless you would like to look anybody up. There are the Paynes, for instance.”
“No; I don’t want to see any one. We’ll keep to the veldt.”
“Them’s my sentiments,” cried Dick, gaily, emphasising the said gaiety by a swish of his whip that caused his steed to prance and snort. His wounded arm was quite healed by now. “What a difference there is about the veldt here; no jolly old koorhaans crowing and squawking—or a buck every now and then jumping up under your feet, not even an odd pair of blue cranes. Only those silly old bromvogels, and they wouldn’t be there either, but that even John Kafir won’t eat them.”
A pair of the great black hornbills were strutting among the sparse mimosa on the opposite slope, emitting their deep, booming grunt. But although deficient in game, the veldt was fair and pleasant to the eye, with its roll of sunlit plain and round-topped hills, and if the crowing of koorhaans or the grating cackle of the wild guinea-fowl were wanting, the cooing of doves, and the triple call of the hoepoe from the bush-grown kloofs made soft music on the slumbrous calm.