“Did you ever swim in champagne with your mouth open?”
“No.”
“What a fool!”
Then he stopped, straightened up and sang, in a die-away, broken voice, with chattering teeth:
“See the Britons, Bloody Britons,
Millions of ’em doncherknow,
All a swarming up the kopje–
Just to turn about an hopje!
O, where in hell to go!
Bloody Britons!”
Grasping her roughly by the shoulder, he exclaimed: “Why don’t you join in the chorus, you blithering idiot?”
This song, in fragments and with variations, he sang–or rather tried to sing–repeatedly. At the edge of the woods he seemed to shrink from the fury of the storm which drove, in cutting blasts, against their faces. And on the threshold of the cottage he again held back. 112In the doorway, leaning against the jamb, he said, solemnly:
“Look here, young feller, just mark my words, women are devils. The less you have to do with them the better for you. D–n the whole tribe! That’s what I say!”
But she dragged him in and supported him to a chair before the fire. He sat shivering with cold, his chin upon his breast, apparently exhausted by the walk. The water dripping from his saturated garments formed puddles on the floor.
Elinor, for a moment, stood regarding him in heart-stricken silence. Once more she felt of his clothes, then, after an inward struggle, she made a resolve. As she did it the color came into her cheeks.