And to Lamont, who knew that the gift of a piece of tobacco and a sixpence would cause honest Zingela positively to beam upon his assailant of yesterday, the situation was too funny. But he wanted to get rid of the other, and the opportunity seemed too good to be lost. The scare had begun.
“You have got a jolly place here, Lamont, and you don’t seem overworked either, by Jove!” went on Ancram, with more than a dash of envy in his tone, as he gazed forth over the sunlit landscape, dotted with patches of bush, stretching away to the dark line of forest beyond, for the two men were seated in front of the house, beneath the extension of the roof which formed a rough verandah.
“Yes. You were talking of Courtland—well, I’m nearly as big a landowner here as the old Squire. Funny, isn’t it? As for being overworked, that comes by fits and starts. Just now there’s nothing much to do but shoot and bury your infected cattle, and watch the remainder die of drought.”
“Phew! I can’t think how you fellows can smoke such stuff as that,” said Ancram disgustedly, as the other started a fresh pipe of Magaliesburg. “The very whiff of it is enough to make one sick.”
“Sorry; you must get used to it though, if you’re going to stop in the country,” rejoined Lamont, unconcernedly blowing out great clouds. “Have another drink? The whiff of that doesn’t make you sick, eh?”
“You’re right there, old chap,” laughed Ancram. “This is a deuced thirsty country of yours, Lamont, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Oh dear, no! Never mind me. It’s all that, even when there isn’t a drought on.”
“Now I could understand a fellow like Peters smoking that stuff,” said Ancram, going back to the question of the tobacco. “But you, who’ve had an opportunity of knowing better—that’s a thing I can hardly take in. By the way, Lamont, while on the subject of Peters, I think he’s too beastly familiar and patronising altogether.”
“Patronising—’m—yes.”
If Ancram perceived the crispness of the tone, the snap in his host’s eyes, he, thinking the latter was afraid of him, enjoyed being provocative all the more.