“I know so many men in that regiment!” said Chum sweetly, “and they are all such nice fellows, too! The Duke of Humbug’s Own, isn’t it?”
“Yes; and the regimental motto is, ‘When you tell a lie, tell a good one!’—the badge, a chimera seen in a mirage!”
They had no time to laugh, because Mrs. Churton’s voice was heard across the room, earnestly expostulating with Ally.
“The colours on the red Brazilian unpaid letter-stamp won’t stand steaming. You had better try wet blotting-paper.”
“Oh, come outside!” said Halton impatiently, pushing open the shuttered window-frame, and holding out his hand to help his companion over the step. Mrs. Lewin followed him down the stoep and into a narrow path lightly flanked by logwood. Three ravenala palms stood sentinel outside the quarters of the O.C.T., their split fans looking like raised hands to her imagination. The ravenala is the “Traveller’s Tree,” and is tapped for water by enterprising tourists; but it is too common in Key’land to excite the inhabitants, who look upon it as any other palm. To Mrs. Lewin it had become somehow symbolic of the place, and she liked its solemn hands outspread above her head, and regretted that there did not happen to be a single specimen at the bungalow. Besides the ravenalas and the logwood, the Churtons’ quarters were singularly treeless, but they owned one of the three tennis courts in Port Victoria. Maitso and Mitsinjovy are not remarkable for flat spaces of ground, and the Churtons were esteemed fortunate. All the houses on Maitso Hill had been apportioned to married officers when the troops were first quartered there, and as the paths zigzagged up and down the steep incline, each sharp curve would reveal a small bungalow, until the long line of actual barracks crowned the crest. From a distance it looked as if one house were hung above another, tier on tier in the green, but a nearer acquaintance proved the garrison more rugged than picturesque. At Mitsinjovy the officers’ quarters, being new and specially built for them, were of a more regular type, and proportionately hideous; but Maitso had been a favourite residence to the old planters, and when given over to the Wessex, they counted themselves luckier than the Gunners. Halton and Mrs. Lewin sauntered as far as the tennis courts, and there paused, looking down on the best view of Port Victoria and the bay that Key Island affords, while they talked in desultory fashion.
“So you are interested in Key’land!” said the Commissioner meditatively. “Have you seen anything of the island yet?”
“Nothing but Port Victoria—and the docks!” said Mrs. Lewin, with a laughing glance at the forests of masts far off in the bay.
“I am glad you give the Government hobby its chance—but you should have said the Docks, the Harbour, the Coaling Wharves, and—Port Victoria! That is the correct order. We are merely here on sufferance, as Government House bears witness! Would you like me to take you out to China Town, I wonder?”
“I am sure I should—if I knew anything about it. Where is China Town?”
“It is on the other side of that hill,”—he pointed up the valley to an undiscovered inland. “It is the headquarters of the Chinese here, and we suspect at the root of the mischief. They have got some place where they brew this abominable form of hashish which sends the ordinary native mad, and makes him get up riots and kill white people—you see? But as yet we have not absolutely spotted John Chinaman brewing in any large quantities, and we cannot condemn on isolated instances. You are really interested, Mrs. Lewin!”