“Lily, my dear girl!” expostulates her mother.
“I can’t help it. Slow? I should think Nesta did find it slow. Why, she was only saying this morning she’d give ten years of her life for a little excitement.”
“Lily is simply ‘embroidering,’ Mr Upward,” pleads Nesta, with a bright laugh. “I said—at anytime—not only now or here.”
“We could have found you excitement enough in some of my other districts. You could have come after tiger with me.”
“Oh no—no! That isn’t the kind of thing I mean—And I can’t think how Mrs Upward could have done it”—with a glance at the latter. For this gentle, refined looking woman with the pretty eyes and soft, charmful manner, had stood by her husband’s side when the striped demon of the jungle, maddened with his wounds, ears laid back and eyes flashing green flame, had swooped upon them in lightning charge, uttering that awful coughing roar calculated to unnerve the stoutest of hearts—to drop, as though lightning-struck, before the heavy Express bullet directed by a steady hand and unflinching brain.
“Well, the kind of excitement you mean will roll up in a day or two in the shape of Bracebrydge and Fleming”—replies Upward, with a genial twinkle in his eyes—“they want to come after the chikór. It’s rather a nuisance—This place won’t carry two camps. But I say, Miss Cheriton, those fellows wont do any chikór shooting.”
“Why not?—Isn’t that what they are coming for?”
“Oh, yes. But then, you see, when the time comes to go out, each of them will make some excuse to remain behind—or to double back. Neither will want to leave the field open to the other.”
“Ah, but—I don’t care for either of them,” laughed Nesta, not pretending to misunderstand his meaning.
“Not? Why everybody is in love with Bracebrydge—or he thinks they are—There’s only one thing I must warn you against, and that is not to spell his name with an ‘I’. There are two girls in Shâlalai to my knowledge who wrecked all their chances on that rock.”