"Well, there wouldn't be much apiece if they all had a bite."
Diana sat up and shook the hair out of her eyes, looking very much like a small imp of ten, instead of a finished young lady of twenty-two. "There's just a chance they would eat Aunt Emily first," said she, "and as that is a consummation devoutly to be wished, I think we'll go...."
They both laughed, but Meryl soon grew serious again. "I'm awfully in earnest, Di. Who cares about Norway when they might go to Rhodesia! You'll perhaps fall overboard and be eaten by commonplace fishes if you go there."
"What has given you the notion, Meryl? I thought only miners and farmers went to Rhodesia, except a few tourists to the Victoria Falls. Do you think there is anything to eat there except locusts and wild honey?"
"Let's go and see. I ... I ... want to do some Empire work or something. I can't explain. But we've just got into such a maze of petty happenings and petty pleasures, and since the King died ..."
"Of course!... you've been miles away ever since, dreaming and romancing and imperialising. But it won't last, and when you've landed us all high and dry in some Rhodesian wilderness we shall just hate each other and everything else, and be ready to murder you."
"Nonsense. We shall explore all round, and study the natives and the animals, and make friends with the settlers; and it will all be just new and big and teeming with interest."
"Not if you are chewing the mule harness, because you've had nothing to eat for days."
"O yes, even that; why not?... We should love it all when we came safely back."
"Well, I'll have the bridle, then. It won't, perhaps, be quite so greasy."