“Yours? Form of scare! By jingo! that’s a ‘form of scare’ we could do with plenty of during these jolly lively days,” returned Fullerton.
“Oh, and look here, Dick,” went on the girl. “I must ask you not to talk about it—I mean not to go bragging around to everybody that your sister-in-law shot twenty or forty or sixty Matabele—or whatever you are going to make it—in the fight at the Kezane Store.”
“Why in thunder not? Why shouldn’t you have your share of the kudos as well as anyone else in the same racket?”
“Because I don’t want it. Because I want to forget my share in it. The consciousness of having taken life, even in the very extremity of self-defence, can never be a subject of self-congratulation, especially to a woman. I, for one, don’t want ever to hear it referred to.”
“Well, you are squeamish, Clare. Let me tell you that the rest of us don’t share your opinions. There isn’t a man jack, from Lamont downwards, who hasn’t been blowing your trumpet loud enough to wake the dead.”
A softer look came into her face at the name. Perhaps her brother-in-law partially read it, perhaps he didn’t.
“By the way, Dick,” she went on, “I suppose by this time you have found reason for somewhat altering your opinion of Mr Lamont’s courage, have you? It used to be rather unfavourable, if I remember right.”
“Rather, I should think I had. I told him so too, during a lull in the scrimmage.”
“Oh, you told him so. And what did he answer?”
“Nothing. He sloshed a pistol-bullet into a big buck nigger who’d romped up in the long grass to blaze into us. By George, here he is.”