"Triangle—what!"
"Well, you know the old saying about two being company, don't you?"
"Of course I do—that's where it comes in," replied the lad not over lucidly, "I want to make the two!"
The major laughed at the rueful countenance, as he clapped the boy on the shoulder.
"You'll get over it all right, old fellow; it's just like inoculation, a feeble taste of something which might have been ever so much worse. Trust me, you'll get over it!"
"Never!" stoutly maintained young Dean as he heaved a stone at something which fled across the court, his mental vision failing to register a picture of the future in which Jill Wetherbourne, daughter of Molly and Jack, occupied the principal position.
Later, Leonie, sitting with Jan Cuxson on a block of fallen masonry, smiled sweetly upon the head shikari, who, salaaming, prayed her to honour him by accepting a little memento of the shikar which had terminated so successfully upon the slaying of the tiger.
In his open palm he held two small bones about two and a half inches in length, two little superstitious tokens which ensure sons to the woman who treasures them, and which, he told her in his broken English, were only found in the tiger, one on each side of the chest, unconnected with any other bone at all.
"It is a charm, O! Mem Sahib, defender of the poor, which will assuredly bring you happiness.
"And may the sons of the sahib grow straight as the pine tree," he added slowly in his own tongue, as he felt the sahib's eyes fixed steadily upon him.