“I know, I’ve tried the Natale!”
“At Port Victoria? It’s a palace compared to this, I assure you!” He laughed his pleasant, unrestrained laugh, as if his lungs had never been cramped. Then, glancing at her black gown, the eyes under the broad hat grew graver and a little pitiful. Mrs. Lewin looked unintentionally girlish and appealing in the simplicity of the clothes which were all that the native dressmaker could accomplish. But because she was herself it seemed bound to fit her, and the beauty of her figure was quite as obvious under their plain folds as in her more elaborate gowns. Mr. Ambroise thought with honest sympathy of the poor fellow who had made such a hash of things in East Africa, and looked into Mrs. Lewin’s eyes with a little sense of awe. Like every one else, he could never tell their exact colour; he only knew that they were most wonderful, and held a tragedy.
“Is this all your baggage—and your servants?” he said, looking round him at her property, which seemed to her rather overwhelming on the elementary jetty. “Everything you have?”
“Except my pony. They are disembarking him now—with some difficulty,” said Leoline drily.
Liscarton had a character of his own, and was showing it. He might have been a member of Parliament in some former state of existence from his tendency to argue. When he had done his best to demolish the jetty with his hoofs, and had scattered the crowd to the safety of the beach, he consented to walk quietly into the little town, his ears laid back among his ragged mane, and the whites of his eyes showing wickedly.
“I have no cart, and it is only half-a-mile—will you walk?” said Ambroise simply. “You won’t get on that brute, will you?”
“I think he would behave better if I rode him,” said Mrs. Lewin. “It does not matter about a habit—I can ride in this skirt.”
It seemed to her a strange procession through the dirty little streets—herself mounted, by gracious permission of Liscarton, Ambroise walking at the pony’s shoulder, the servants behind, and half-a-dozen natives following with the boxes. The men here she noticed, with the knowledge gained in six months, were more Malagasy than Negro—a much finer race, brown-skinned and blue-eyed, with flattened slender limbs, and features which had the pensive dignity of the Hindoo. Ambroise’s servants were of the same tribe, from Anossi, and waited on her that night with strange words that she did not recognise, even from the Patois—Inona izao? for What do you wish? and Salama for greeting. The night was intensely hot—far hotter than any she had spent in the bungalow—and she was not sorry to rise at four next morning to ride out to Vohitra. At all events it was in the hills, and would be cooler than this low-lying, crowded little town.
“I sent up some supplies,” Ambroise said, as he marshalled the little procession, and mounted his own pony—he was going to ride out with them some way, and show them the road—“and my butler is up there waiting for you. I hope you’ll find everything in order. I have sent plenty of tinned things, as it’s difficult to get them out sometimes, and you might run short.”
“It is most kind of you to take all this trouble. Mrs. Gilderoy did not warn me that I should be so helpless on other people’s bounty.”