“Well, Lucy,” said Fullerton, expanding accordingly, “I believe I’m rather glad you two girls persuaded me into this run. A spell at the Buluwayo Club will come in first-rate. You get rather sick of a poky little hole like Gandela.”
“Pity you wouldn’t let yourself be ‘persuaded’ a week ago,” rapped out the conjugal retort. “Or even more. You’d have been in the thick of the Buluwayo Club at this moment.”
“Yes, you took a deal of persuading, Dick,” supported Clare. “It would have been much better if we had started a week earlier.”
There was an unconscious gravity in her tone that did not seem to fit the subject or the occasion. But she was thinking of the grave urgency of Lamont’s warning—that they should remove at once; and of this, of course, the others were in complete ignorance.
“Oh well, a week more or less doesn’t matter a row of pins,” returned Fullerton unconcernedly. “That’s one good point about this jolly country, at any rate. No one need ever be in a hurry.”
“Nor ever is,” appended Wyndham. “Hallo! Here are some police Johnnies coming along.”
Riding single file along a narrow path, which would converge with the high road a little farther on, they made out a small party of Mounted Police—a dozen in all. They gained the main road just at the same time as the mule-waggon crossed the path. The sergeant rode up and saluted.
“Going to Buluwayo?” said Wyndham.
“Yes, sir. And Captain Isard said we’d better keep with you for the way.”
“Sort of escort, eh?”