“First thing is to get some clothes for the lady,” he continued. “You’re the nearest size; I’m too long and John’s too fat. What can you raise? That pair of grey flannel trousers you keep for state occasions and your other shooting-coat will do as a start.”
“I’ve got a Jaeger sweater, too, and a pair of old tennis-shoes.”
“Good, and I’ve got my one and only silk shirt. Don’t suppose she’ll want to wear your sweater next to her skin. Thank goodness, I’ve got a lot of safety-pins in my outfit. That’s the chief essential as far as women go. Well, if you help Sadiq, I’ll go and wake her up; I’m glad she got to sleep. I was afraid she might break down if she didn’t.”
Ten minutes later, he returned chuckling to where I was helping Sadiq rope things on to the camels.
“D——d lucky you have a fellow with you who’s been brought up by a crowd of sisters. I wonder what the wretched girl would have done if she’d been handed over to the tender mercies of you and John.”
Considering the trouble I’d taken to collect the lady, and the fact that I have a perfectly good sister myself, I thought the taunt was unmerited. So I merely asked:
“Whose sisters?” whereupon Forsyth answered in quite a peeved way that he meant his own.
By a quarter to five, we had everything loaded up save the food yakhdans, the tent, and my valise, which Aryenis was using. We cast anxious eyes on the tent as time went on, but it was just on five when she emerged and came over to us, rather shyly, I thought. I got up (Forsyth, seeing her coming, had gone to get Sadiq to strike the tent) and said good-morning, inquiring after her shoulder and arms.
“My arms are all right now, and my shoulder’s not hurting much,” she said, and asked after my face.
Being a woman, she had done a lot with the miscellaneous outfit, mostly mine, which Forsyth had presented to her. I noticed that, as he prophesied, the silk shirt was inside the sweater, and, being a mere man, wished it was the other way about. You see, the sweater was mine.