“Then I cannot claim seniority of standing, after all. Are there any more ‘importations’ at Seringa Vale?”
“Yes. Hicks. But he’s so thoroughly acclimatised that he don’t count. You and I are exiles and sojourners in a far country. I foresee we shall be talking British ‘shop’ to a grievous extent,” said Claverton, not that he cared a rush about England, or had any great reason to, for the matter of that, but it would establish an entente with his beautiful travelling companion, a something quite between themselves. He was surprised to notice a wearied and even pained expression flit across the lovely face, like the shadow of a cloud passing over the bright smooth surface of a mountain lake.
“I don’t know. I think I would rather forget all about England,” she replied, sadly. “It is a subject with no fascination for me. As I’m here in this country I want to like it, and it is highly probable that I shall, at any rate during the next two months. By-the-bye, what dear old people Mr and Mrs Brathwaite are!”
“That they are,” assented the other, heartily. And then for the life of him he could not help subsiding into silence. She had a history, then. She would fain forget the land of her birth. It was not wholly the stern law of necessity that had banished her to a distant land to fight the rough, hard battle of life. There was another cause, and glancing at her as she sat beside him, Claverton thought he could in a measure guess at the nature of that cause. His pulses were strangely stirred, and even then he was conscious of a longing to comfort her, of a wild, unreasoning resentment against some person unknown. Remarkable, wasn’t it, considering he had only seen her for the first time in his life that morning, and that now it was still far short of midday?
But two persons of opposite sexes, both young, both goodly to look upon, and under circumstances situated such as these two, will, I trow, find it difficult to preserve silence for long—seated side by side in the circumscribed space of a buggy. Lilian was the first to break it.
“What was that?” she asked, eagerly, as a loud resounding bark echoed forth from the hillside above them.
“Only a baboon. Look, there he is—that black speck up there; and the others are not far off.”
They were driving through a wild and narrow pass. High overhead great masses of rock cut the skyline in fantastic piles, castellated here, riven there, and apparently about to crumble in pieces, and hurl themselves down upon the road. Thick bush grew right down to the road winding along the side of the hill, which here and there fell straight away from it in rather an alarming and precipitous manner.
It was just at the most alarming of these places that a few puffs of dust and a crack or two of a whip betokened the approach of waggons, and the next moment the foremost of them appeared round a jutting corner of rock. Claverton muttered an imprecation as he noted that the oxen were without a leader, straggling across the very narrow road at their own sweet will, and bearing down upon him and his charge a great deal faster than he liked. The waggon, loaded sky high with wool bales, was still a couple of hundred yards off, but the road from it to the buggy was a brisk declivity; there seemed very insufficient brake on, and no sign of any one in charge. One of two things was likely to happen: either the buggy would be splintered into matchwood against the inner side of the road, or hurled into perdition over the outer one, by the ponderous mass now bearing down uncontrolled upon it. Claverton reined in his horses and hallooed angrily.
An ugly, mud-coloured head rose from the apex of the pile; then apparently subsided.