"I'm a bad judge, but I daresay she'd be about that. Why, do you know her, sir?"
Mr. Smith straightened himself with an obvious effort. "As I have not been to England for five-and-twenty years, is it likely? You said she was English, I think?"
"As a point of fact, I did not, though presumably she is English. She was not the late Godfrey O'Neill's real relative. She was adopted, so I heard. But he left her the business for all that, and she's making it hum. She's marvellously able. But of course you have seen for yourself more of her efforts than I have, sir."
"I have seen them?"
Carter laughed. "I'm afraid you made the same mistake that everybody else made, from Slade and old Image. She is the K. O'Neill of the kindly-buck-up-and-get-it-done letters. She is the Mr. K. that you chaffed me about at Malla-Nulla for admiring so much as a business man."
"My God!" said Swizzle-Stick Smith, and sat back limply against the wall of the hut, and then "My God!" he said again.
Carter hesitated, and then, "Did you," he ventured, "know Miss Kate's own people before the late Godfrey took her over?"
Mr. Smith, with an obvious effort, pulled himself together. "I did, Mr. Carter. Her mother—she—she died. Her father went under. He had a pretty trying time of it first, but when the pinch came he went under most thoroughly. Godfrey O'Neill, good fellow that he was, took the child then, and so she got her chance, and, thank heaven, she's used it."
Carter looked at the old man narrowly. "And is the father alive now?"
But by this time Mr. Smith was his old cool, profane self again. "How the devil should I know? Do you think I keep track of all the failures in Africa? You seem very interested in this young woman yourself. May I ask if you've any aspirations in that direction?"