“They don’t hear anything of it from me, I promise you. Will you ring for the lamps to be turned out?”
Dick Minton pulled the bell. His father-inlaw went to his bed without a word.
But an hour had passed before Dick went to his room. He lit a cigar and strolled away from the Residency to the brink of the sea; and there, on the low scrub, looking out to the enormous rollers that broke on the shallow beach two miles from where he stood, spreading their white foam all around, he tried to think how it was he had been led to behave more foolishly than he had ever behaved since the days of his youth.
He was not successful in his attempts in this direction.
And Dr Koomadhi also remained thinking his thoughts for fully half an hour after reaching that pleasant verandah of his, which got every breath that came inland from the sea.
“I can do it easily enough—yes, in his presence; but what good is that to me?” he muttered. “No good whatever—just the opposite. I must have the Khabela—ah, the Khabela! That works miles apart.”
Two days later he paid his visit to the Residency and drank tea with Mrs Minton. He told her that he found it necessary to go up country for ten days or so. He knew of a nice miasma tract, and he hoped to gain in a few days as much information regarding its operations on the human frame as he could obtain in as many years in the comparative salubriousness of the coast.
Her husband did not put in an appearance while Koomadhi was in the drawing-room. His wife reproached him for that.
He took her reproach meekly.