Ethel was silent for a few moments. She was not quite easy in her mind. “I was in a great hurry to get home last night, but now it doesn’t seem quite so delightful,” she thought, with a sort of strange bitterness; and she wondered how in the world she could ever have allowed herself to be so frightened. But meanwhile there was Seringa Vale, and the adventure, or misadventure, was at an end.
Greatly to Ethel’s relief, neither anxiety nor surprise were manifested on their return.
“Hullo!” sang out Hicks. “You were fortunate in being so far behind. We thought of going back, too; but it seemed no use, so we rode on as hard as we could, and got here in the thick of the storm, wet through.”
“Ethel doesn’t like Dutch houses, but she had to sleep in a worse one than Van Rooyen’s once,” said Mrs Brathwaite. “There were only two rooms, and five of us had to turn into one, while all the men took possession of the other. But it was such a place! We couldn’t sleep all night.”
“I suppose not,” said Claverton. If they were at cross purposes, it was not his business to go out of his way to enlighten them, especially as, in this instance, cross purposes were best.
And Ethel evidently thought so too.
Note 1. The large striped hyaena is called “wolf” in South Afrioa, just as the panther is always referred to as “tiger.” Both terms are, of course, zoologically erroneous.