“Just over there, my baas.”
“Have my supper ready when I come back. I suppose you got some fresh meat and bread in the town?”
“No, my baas,” was the modest reply.
“What? The dickens take you—”
“I didn’t know when my baas would be back, my baas.”
“Oh! Hel—p! Get out some bully beef then, you—you idiot!” Bettington gulped down worse things, wondering gloomily how he was going to suppress the expression of his real opinion of Bat during the rest of the journey, for the boy was a most particular fool and the bane of his life.
Moreover, on returning from his dip with the appetite of a wolf gnawing his vitals, he found that though his blankets had been perfunctorily unrolled under the specified tree, of supper there was no sign. His box of provisions had not been got off the waggon, and there was not so much as a tin of bully in sight!
“Bat!—you—you bat!” he roared in a terrible voice. But Bat was non est. Wise for once, he had melted away into the night.
“Of all the miserable!” Bettington was obliged to put his pipe into his mouth and bite on that. Bitterly he thought of that invitation to supper recently refused and by now probably a dead letter.
“My Inkosisan wants to speak to the baas,” a voice so gentle and modest that it might have been Bat’s own, spoke at his elbow. It was in fact another of the afflicted Makalika race who stood waving an apologetic hand in the direction of the lady by the waggon. As Bettington moved towards her, she rose from her box and addressed him in a charming but distressed voice.