A score or more of natives in their vivid colours, which seem so atune with all that has to do with love, mattered not at all; but Leonie turned and pointed casually to the Devil, enjoying his matutinal bath, as the boy flung himself from the discredited polo pony on which he had done his best.
He seized both her hands and held them very tightly, then catching sight of Cuxson, let them go suddenly.
"Of course!" he said, "of course you would—you lucky beggar!" Then added triumphantly, "But anyway, I told her so!"
CHAPTER XXIX
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!"—The Bible.
Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad who worshipped openly at Leonie's beautiful feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of his wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.
Bursting with excitement, he hurled himself into his racing-car one
Sunday morning, about a fortnight after Leonie's hasty ride riverwards,
and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty streets of
Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to the Jodhpur Club.
She was waiting for breakfast under the trees with some friends, discussing the four-some they had just finished, and watching the arrival of various cars which were parked, with some difficulty, with the others which had arrived earlier.
"Sounds all right," said Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the club's breakfast pièce de résistance, namely fatty sausages and mashed of all things. "I am beginning to feel quite thrilled. Let's see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger's Point by launch from Kulna, and there we find monkeys, adjutant birds, spotted deer, and tigers all ready."
"Don't rot!" said young Dean. "I've bribed the finest shikari in the whole of Bengal to stage-manage the whole thing; he did seem rather contemptuous over the chotar shikar, as he called it, I must say, until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then he bucked up considerably and said he would do his very best to provide sport for the mems. The programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger, 'cause he says it would be too risky a job at such short notice; also, and the real reason I should say, there hasn't been a tiger seen, anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near that same Hindu temple umpteen years ago."