“I assure you I have never used the tent in my life. I always prefer to sleep out in the open. As for the food, it makes no odds at all, please believe me.”
“But your boy ran away when he could not find your box. You will have no supper!—You must share mine,” she proffered shyly. He gave a surreptitious glance at the wafery slices of beef and tomatoes, then answered with alacrity:
“Not at all, not at all. I wasn’t going to have any supper anyway. I’m—I’m not hungry.”
He had in fact decided that this was no time to put on exhibition the wolf that raged within him. And his manners being persuasive as well as pretty, he eventually convinced the lady of his sincerity, and she sat down to finish her supper alone while he departed with the air of a man with a mission—which was exactly what he was.
Straight as a homing pigeon he headed for the waggon of the wounded warriors. Most of them had already turned in, but the American surgeon, resting near the remains of a good meal, hailed him blithely:
“Hullo, Bet!”
“For the love of Michael Angelo give me a drink, and a wedge of bread and bully,” said the hapless Bet. “And send your animal of a Makalika to search every waggon until he finds Mrs Stannard’s box of provisions. When found, deliver to me.”
Later, his inner man replenished, he returned to McKinnon’s waggon with the air of a conqueror and the recovered box of provisions.
“Well! we’ve got it, Mrs Stannard!”
She looked up at him with such surprise that he wondered at first whether she had never expected to see it again. Then the truth occurred to him.