Raynier laughed.
“They’re only allowed four apiece by the Koran,” he said. “But I believe they find ways of driving a coach-and-six through that enactment. Fine fellow Sarbaland Khan, isn’t he?”
“Very. Why, he’s a perfect gentleman. Really he’s quite a splendid-looking man.”
“Many of these people answer to that description, that’s why they are so interesting. Tarleton describes them as ‘niggers.’ But then the British are first-rate at misnomers.”
“I should think so. But how well you talk to them, Mr Raynier. Is it a difficult language to learn. Anything like Hindustani, for instance?”
“No. There’s a lot of Persian in it. I went in for learning Pushtu some years ago, thinking it might come in useful—and it has. By the way, a strange thing happened in London not long before I came back. I can’t help thinking that the man belonged to one of these tribes—but I never saw him again, nor yet the stick I armed him with.”
Then he proceeded to tell her about the incident of the Oriental in the crowd on Mafeking night, and the part he and others had borne in his rescue. Hilda listened, keenly interested.
“And you never got back the stick?” she said.
“No, never. I was going to say—worse luck—but it wasn’t. On the contrary, it was the only ‘lucky’ part of the whole business.”
The dry, satirical tone did not escape his listener’s abnormally acute perceptions. But the recollection seemed to revive the abstraction of thought which had characterised him when they had first set out, and which the incidents of their expedition had gone far to dispel. Now it all seemed to return. This, too, did not escape her, and she was striving to piece the two circumstances together. But as yet all connectedness failed.