“Why? A handsome one was given to you.”
“Yes,” said Frank, with a slight twitching of the brows, “but I’m not going to wear that again.”
The rajah took one of two that he was wearing and gave it to the boy.
“Keep it as my present,” he said; “and I hope, boy, you will live to see the day when the kris has given place to good honest laws which protect people so that they can go unarmed.”
There needs no telling how, as soon as the rajah’s ally had gone, the campong settled down to its everyday life, but that life grew more and more new. The Resident and the doctor stayed; Mr Greig began to make trade flourish; and Murray went on with his collecting, working energetically for six months, when he was obliged to return to England with Ned.
But they were both back again within six months more, and a friend of Murray’s accompanied him. He was a clergyman, but a great naturalist, and he joined his friend in collecting, till one day there was a great festival, for an English gentleman was married to an English lady, a certain Mr Wilson coming up from Dindong to be best-man. Afterwards the happy pair went down the river and along the coast to Malacca to spend their honeymoon; while Ned Murray stayed at the campong to look after the specimens and enjoy himself to his heart’s content.
Then the happy pair came back, and there was constant talk of going back to England when the collecting was done; but the collecting never was done, and Murray set to work to write a book on the natural history of the place, that meant years of delightful work, so they stayed on to see the land improving month by month, and find the rajah their firmest friend.
A couple of years had passed, when one day Frank, who had developed a great love for mineralogy, and Ned, who promised to be a great authority on botany, came upon Tim Driscol busily improving the Murrays’ garden.
“What are you doing, Tim?” said Ned.