ALL AT ONCE HE CAUGHT SIGHT OF MY TOPEE.
"Get up the tree, Joyce," I whispered. "I'll boost you."
So I did, shoving her up for all I was worth, and she hung on as high as she could reach, and there she stuck; even the best girls aren't quite like boys.
"Swarm up it," I urged.
"I can't," she said in an agonised voice, and I saw it was true, her petticoats were to blame, of course; any boy would have been up before you could say "knife."
Down she came again with a thud, and old Mr. Buffalo heard it and made for us like a fiend. We ran for the next tree and dodged him round it; it was a bit too exciting! He made rushes at us dead straight, and we tried always to keep the trunk of the tree between us and him as if it were the leader in Fox and Geese. When he came past like a bolt we ran the other side, but once or twice he nearly spiked us, and if he had knocked one of us down, or we had stumbled, it would have been all up with us. It was exhausting too. I was fearfully out of breath myself; being on a steamer a fellow can't keep in training, and as for Joyce, she was panting so that she couldn't speak.
Then I noticed that across the road was a jungly thicket; it was not open ground, as it was on the side we had come from, and I thought if we could reach that we might perhaps lose the gentleman, or he would lose us.
So I explained to Joyce in gasps that the next time he charged we must run behind his back and bolt across the road; she nodded and clutched my hand tighter than ever.
So we did it and were half-way over the road—it was very wide—before he found it out.