The warning was just one shade too late. Down came the colander, its contents promptly burying themselves in the long grass. The salvage which Hicks managed to effect was but a very small fraction of the original portion.
“There now, I’ve spilt all the mealies,” said he, ruefully, eyeing the scattered grain. He was not thinking of its intrinsic value, but that the necessity of going back for more would do him out of the two or three hundred yards left to him of his walk with Laura.
“Your friend would say ‘it’s of no use crying over spilt mealies.’ Never mind, we can go back and get some more.”
“What!” he exclaimed, delightfully. “Do you mean to say you’ll go all the way back with me? But really I can’t let you take all that trouble,” he added, with reluctant compunction.
“I mean to say I’ll go all the way back with you, and I intend ‘to take all that trouble’ with or with out permission,” she replied, looking up at him with a saucy gleam in her eyes.
Close to the storeroom they came upon Claverton. He was sitting on the disselboom of a tent-waggon smoking a pipe, and meditatively shying pebbles at an itinerant scarabaeus, which was wandering aimlessly about on a sun-baked open patch of ground about seven yards off.
“Well, has your sister thought better of it, and removed the ban?” asked he, as the two came up.
“No, she hasn’t,” answered Laura, “but I see you’re penitent, so I will do so on her behalf. You may come down with us,” she added, demurely. She knew he would do nothing of the sort, so could safely indulge the temptation to mischief.
Poor Hicks was on thorns. “Yes, come along, Claverton,” he chimed in, mechanically, in the plenitude of his self-abnegation fondly imagining that his doleful tones were the acme of cordiality.
“Well, I think I will,” pretended Claverton, making a feint at moving. Hicks’ countenance fell, and Laura turned away convulsed. “Don’t know, though; think I’ll join you later. I must go in and get a fresh fill; my pipe’s gone out,” and he sauntered away to Hicks’ great relief, as he and Laura started off to rejoin the others at the ostrich camp.