“You’ll never stand English life after this, Dick.”
“Oh yes. We can always come out here again for change. There’s more variety of sport in England; in fact, there’s something going all the year round. What do you think, dear? The dad talks about putting me up for Parliament soon.”
“A very sensible plan too.”
“But I can’t spout. And I’m pretty certain I’d promise the crowd anything it asked for. Whether it would get it is another thing.”
Hazel laughed, but she there and then mentally resolved that Sir Anson’s wish should meet with fulfilment—in certain contingencies, that is.
“What a rum thing it is to feel one’s self out of leading-strings again,” went on Dick. “But I wonder when old Greenoak will turn up here and give me marching orders, like he did at Haakdoorn. I shan’t obey this time. Though, I was forgetting, I shall have to give them to myself.”
When Harley Greenoak had returned to the Komgha he laughed to himself as he learned what had become of his charge. Twice he had ridden over and spent a day or two with the Waybridges, and from what he had seen there he judged that his responsibility was nearing its end. But the fact of his charge being in such good hands had left him free to follow out the secret investigations and negotiations in which he was then engaged, and the success or failure of which, both chances being about even, would be of momentous import.
Before Hazel could reply there was a rush of dogs, and vast snarling and barking as the brutes leapt at the horses, and one or two, incidentally, at their riders. The latter on topping a rise had come upon a large kraal, whose beehive-shaped huts stood in clusters, adjoining the square, or circular, cattle or goat pens common to each.
In a moment Dick had curled the lash of his raw-hide whip round the long, lithe body of a fine, tawny, black-muzzled greyhound, which was savagely leaping at the hind quarters of the steed ridden by Hazel. With a snarling, agonised yelp the beast dropped back howling, and for a second or two the ardour of the others seemed checked. Then they came on again.
Dick now turned his horse, and charging in among them, cut right and left with his whip. The savage pack, demoralised, retired howling, and by this time the riders were right abreast of the kraal.