“‘To go away’!” repeated Edala, with scornful emphasis, and dropping a hand upon that of the other. “But you’re not going away, so don’t let’s hear any more about it.”
“I’ve not come to live here, you know,” was the laughing rejoinder. “Well then, we won’t talk any more about parting company just yet since you’re not quite so anxious to get rid of me as I thought. Do you know, Edala, I have hardly any friends, almost none—acquaintances, yes,”—in reply to the look of astonishment evoked by the statement—“plenty of them. I am not exactly poor either—not in these days, though I have known the meaning of cruel straits—and can do what I like and go where I like, within modest limits. But I have been very happy here—I don’t know when I have enjoyed any time so much.”
“I should have thought you’d have found it beastly slow,” said Edala, wonderingly, and speaking in the light of her own unsatisfied aspirations. Her new relative was a great enigma to her. Why, for instance, with all her advantages had she never married? though this to her was nothing very wonderful, for she herself, given the same advantages, would have thought of that time-honoured institution as so remote a contingency as not to be worth consideration. Again she seldom said much about her people, or her earlier life, except in a vague and generalising sort of way.
“Anything but that,” answered Evelyn. “Why I feel in twice the form I was in when I came.”
“You look it too.”
This was bare fact. The joyous, healthy, outdoor life in a splendid and genial climate, had set its mark upon Evelyn Carden; had heightened her outward attractions, at the first not inconsiderable, as we have shown.
“You know,” went on Edala, “there are precious few places in this country where they five the life we live—I mean as far as we womenkind are concerned. Anywhere else you’d have been stuck down to read, and play the piano, and talk gossip—with an occasional ride or drive to some similar and neighbouring place to go through the same exercises within the limit of a day. They wouldn’t have stuck you on a horse, and romped you about over all sorts of rough country, bushbuck hunting and all that. Why they’d be horrified at the bare idea—though, I forgot—we haven’t been able to teach you to shoot, yet.”
Evelyn laughed.
“I’m sorry to say you haven’t, and I’m sadly afraid now that you never will. I suppose I haven’t been caught young enough.”
Both Edala and her father had done all they knew how to impart that instruction. They had assured. Evelyn that within a week at the outside she would be able to turn over her first bushbuck. But it was of no use. She got plenty of chances, but when the rushing, frightened antelope broke covert and bounded by like the wind, her nerve played her tricks, and she would blindly lash off both barrels at anything or nothing. And then, too, the gun would kick, as even the best gun will do if badly held; and after a bruised cheekbone, and a badly aching shoulder she had decided that that form of sport was not at all in her line. They had, however, taught her how to handle a revolver, though she was very far indeed from being able to make prize shooting with the same.