"Perhaps."
"Don't you know?"
"No." He looked at her with a little smile. "It isn't the game to ask questions out here."
"That is just what Mr. Stanley said, and it is so dull of you both. The man's a perfect bear. I christened him 'The Bear' before I had known him an hour. But why is he? Why should he be? That's what I want to know."
"I don't fancy you will. I doubt if anyone knows. He has never made friends, I think, out here, except with the Grenvilles, and they are some connection."
"That's the missionary and his wife, isn't it? What in the world can a man like that see in a missionary? Of all the soppy, flabby individuals give me the usual specimen who goes out to preach Christianity to the heathen, and generally disgusts them and everyone else."
"Not this missionary."
"O, is he an original also?"
"He's one of the finest men I've ever known."
"Then what in the world is he buried in the wilderness for? I never knew anything so absurd. A fine soldier and administrator, just a policeman; a splendid man, just a missionary. And you and your brother just grubbing about in a God-forsaken mine, apparently for nothing. It is enough to make anyone wild." And she faced him with that smouldering indignation she rarely allowed to come to the surface.