"Glad to see you're all right again, Lundi."
That was the spirit of all their welcomes. No one said openly: "Hooray! You're out of the jaws of the law." But they welcomed him like a long-lost brother turned up from the dead, and immediately began to talk about getting up some kind of "jolly" for him. It must be admitted that Rhodesians are always on the look-out for an excuse for a jolly, but this really seemed a reasonable occasion. They told him he looked gloomy and needed a jolly to cheer him up.
"A picnic is the thing for you," said Berlie Hallett, who loved this form of diversion better, even, than flirting. "Let us give him a picnic in his own district, Selukine."
A thoughtful look crossed Marice Hading's face.
"What about his own mine?" she said. "Can't we come and picnic there,
Lundi? I have never seen the Leopard."
The idea was ardently welcomed.
"Yes—the Leopard mine! We'll take our own champagne and baptize the new reef and Lundi's future fortunes. It shall be the great Leopard picnic—the greatest ever!"
It was furthermore suggested that, as there was a moon, it should be a moonlight picnic with a midnight supper at the mine.
Lundi was fain to submit, whether he liked, it or not. He wondered a little what Emma Guthrie would say at having the mine invaded, but personally he did not care a toss. The narcotizing spell had fallen suddenly from him again, and life and his future fortunes looked uninterestingly grey. He became aware of the shrouded figure tapping for attention at the back of his brain. Gay was the cause of it, somehow. He abruptly got up to go, saying he must get back to the mine.
"Emma will want some talking over before he will allow any picnicking around there," he said. "I think I had better go and start on him right away."