“Of course they do; but what have they got to do with Eva?”
“Well, just this: I said I had got no letter; I never said—”
“What?” shouted Ernest.
“Hamba gachlé,” replied Jeremy, the imperturbable, gazing at Ernest out of his blackened eyes. “I never said that I had not got a message.”
Ernest sprang clean out of the little truckle-bed, shaking with excitement. “What is it, man?”
“Just this. She told me to tell you that she ‘loved you dearly.’”
Slowly Ernest sat down on the bed again, and, throwing a blanket over his head and shoulders, remarked, in a tone befitting a sheeted ghost:
“The devil she did! Why couldn’t you say so before?”
Then he got up again and commenced walking, blanket and all, up and down the little room with long strides, and knocking over the water-jug in his excitement.
“Hamba gachlé,” again remarked Jeremy, rising and picking up the water-jug. “How are we going to get any more water? I’ll tell you all about it.”