“You are warm,” she said. “Now that the sun is setting I find it quite cool. Why do you perspire now?”
He had not intended to let her know that he had seen her with the baboons; but quite suddenly, before he realized what he was saying, he had blurted it out.
“I perspire from emotion,” he said. “I went into the jungle when I discovered your pony. I wanted to surprise you; but it was I who was surprised. I saw you in the trees with the baboons.”
“Yes?” she said quite unemotionally, as though it was a matter of little moment that a young girl should be upon intimate terms with savage jungle beasts.
“It was horrible!” ejaculated the Hon. Morison.
“Horrible?” repeated Meriem, puckering her brows in bewilderment. “What was horrible about it? They are my friends. Is it horrible to talk with one’s friends?”
“You were really talking with them, then?” cried the Hon. Morison. “You understood them and they understood you?”
“Certainly.”
“But they are hideous creatures—degraded beasts of a lower order. How could you speak the language of beasts?”
“They are not hideous, and they are not degraded,” replied Meriem. “Friends are never that. I lived among them for years before Bwana found me and brought me here. I scarce knew any other tongue than that of the mangani. Should I refuse to know them now simply because I happen, for the present, to live among humans?”