... so you must take your husbands.
It is our trick. Nature her custom holds
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone
The woman will be out.—Hamlet.
OF course,” said Lottie, as she stood by the side of Oswin Markham when the small steamer which had been specially engaged to take the field-officers of the Bayonetteers over the dreaded bar of Durban harbour was approaching the quay—“of course we shall all go together up to Pietermaritzburg. I have been there before, you know. We shall have a coach all to ourselves from Durban.” She looked up to his face with only the least questioning expression upon her own. But Mr. Markham thought that he had made quite enough promises previously: it would be unwise to commit himself even in so small a detail as the manner of the journey from the port of Durban to the garrison town of Pietermaritzburg, which he knew was at a distance of upwards of fifty miles.
“I have not the least idea what I shall do when we land,” he said. “It is probable that I shall remain at the port for some days. I may as well see all that there is on view in this part of the colony.”
This was very distressing to the young lady.
“Do you mean to desert me?” she asked somewhat reproachfully.
“Desert you?” he said in a puzzled way. “Ah, those are the words in a scene in your part, are they not?”