“Hallo! Nina,” said the voice of Otto, her brother, “any tea out there? I’m as thirsty as a salamander.”
The tea was poured out, the conversation turned upon indifferent topics, and for two people the interest of the evening had vanished.
Next morning, early, Frank Farnborough found a note and package awaiting him. He opened the letter, which ran thus:
“Kimberley—In a dickens of a hurry.
“My dear Frank,—
“Have just got down by post-cart (it was before the railway had been pushed beyond Kimberley), and am off to catch the train for Cape Town, so can’t possibly see you. I had a good, if rather rough, time in ’Mangwato. Knowing your love of natural history specimens, I send you with this a small crocodile, which I picked up in a dried, mummified condition in some bush on the banks of the Mahalapsi River—a dry watercourse running into the Limpopo. How the crocodile got there, I don’t know. Probably it found its way up the river-course during the rains, and was left stranded when the drought came. Perhaps it may interest you; if not, chuck it away. Good-bye, old chap. I shall be at Kimberley again in two months’ time, and will look you up.
“Yours ever,—
“Horace Kentburn.”
Frank smiled as he read his friend’s characteristic letter, and turned at once to the parcel—a package of sacking, some three and a half feet long. This was quickly ripped open, and the contents, a miniature crocodile, as parched and hard as a sun-dried ox-hide, but otherwise in good condition, was exposed.
“I know what I’ll do with this,” said Frank to himself; “I’ll soak the beast in my bath till evening, and then see if I can cut him open and stuff him a bit; he seems to have been perfectly sun-baked.”