“Perhaps Dr. Rodd is of the same way of thinking. Great shame that such a girl should be handed over to a medical scoundrel like Dr. Rodd. I wonder if she cares for him?”
“Just about as much as a canary cares for a tom-cat. I have found that out already.”
“Really, Quatermain, you are admirable. I never knew anyone who could make a better use of the briefest opportunity.”
Then we were silent, waiting, not without a certain impatience, for the return of Miss Heda. She did return with surprising quickness considering that she had found time to search for her parent, to change into a clean white dress, and to pin a single hibiscus flower on to her bodice which gave just the touch of colour that was necessary to complete her costume.
“I can’t find my father,” she said, “but the boys say he has gone out riding. I can’t find anybody. When you have been summoned from a long way off and travelled post-haste, rather to your own inconvenience, it is amusing, isn’t it?”
“Wagons and carts in South Africa don’t arrive like express trains, Miss Marnham,” said Anscombe, “so you shouldn’t be offended.”
“I am not at all offended, Mr. Anscombe. Now that I know there is nothing the matter with my father I’m—But, tell me, how did you get your wound?”
So he told her with much amusing detail after his fashion. She listened quietly with a puckered up brow and only made one comment. It was,—
“I wonder what white man told those Sekukuni Kaffirs that you were coming.”
“I don’t know,” he answered, “but he deserves a bullet through him somewhere above the ankle.”