"It's bound to be Miss Meredith!" she exclaimed, in a pronounced brogue, with a flash of white even teeth—her sole claim to beauty. "It's very welcome you are to Kohat and to the regiment. I'm Frank Olliver, ... Captain Olliver's wife. I'll turn now and ride back a bit of the way with you. Then we can talk as we go. 'Tis the worst of bad luck about your brother. When'll he be leaving?"
"In four or five days. He moves across into our bungalow this morning. It was splendid of Captain Desmond to think of it."
"Ah, Theo's just made that way!" Then, noting a glimmer of surprise in Honor's face, her wide smile shone out once more. "Is it shocked you are because I speak of him so? Well, ... truth is, I'm a privileged person since I pulled him through typhoid seven years ago, when by rights he should have died. I'm a rare hand, anyway, at dropping the formalities with them that suit me taste. Though, by the same token, I've taken no liberties with little Mrs Desmond yet. It's queer. We don't seem to get much further with her; though we'd be glad enough to do it for Theo's sake. You mustn't mind straight speech from me, Miss Meredith. Sure I must have been born with the whole truth in me mouth, for as fast as I open me lips a bit of it slips out. I'll be finding she's your half-sister, or first cousin, or some such thing!"
Honor laughed outright. It would clearly be impossible to take amiss anything that this woman might choose to say. The kindliness of her soul shone through her plain face, like sunlight through a window-pane.
"Her mother is a distant connection of ours," the girl admitted frankly. "And we were brought up for a time like sisters. It must have been rather a startling change for her from a country town at home to a Border station; and she is very young still, and very devoted to her husband."
"She is that, ... after a queer fashion of her own. But Theo's bound to make his mark on the Frontier, like his father before him; and you know the proverb, 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.' Tis hardly meself, though, that should be upholding such a saying as that!"
"No, indeed! No woman ought to uphold it. And, after all," Honor added, with a very becoming touch of seriousness, "there may be better things for a man than to travel fast. He may learn more by travelling slowly, don't you think? And I should imagine that fast or slow, Captain Desmond is bound to arrive in the end—Now I must turn in here, and see if John is awake. I'll come and see you when he is gone. I can spare no time for any one else till then!"
Frank Olliver beamed in unqualified approbation.
"You're just a brick, Miss Meredith," she declared with ready Irish warmth. "An' 'twas a fine wind indeed that carried you up to Kohat."