The exigencies of our tale require, at this point, that we should draw our outline with a bold and rapid pencil.
Disco Lillihammer was stunned, and so was Jumbo, when Harold, some weeks after their arrival at the Cape, informed them that he was engaged to be married to Alice Gray, only daughter of the late Sir Eustace Gray, who had been M.P. for some county in England, which he had forgotten the name of, Alice not having been able to recall it, as her father had died when she was four years old, leaving her a fortune of next-to-nothing a year, and a sweet temper.
Being incapable of further stunning, Disco was rather revived than otherwise, and his dark shadow was resuscitated, when Harold added that Kambira had become Maraquita’s head-gardener, Azinté cook to the establishment, and Obo page-in-waiting—more probably page-in-mischief—to the young Senhorina. But both Disco and Jumbo had a relapse from which they were long of recovering, when Harold went on to say that he meant to sail for England by the next mail, take Jumbo with him as valet, make proposals to his father to establish a branch of their house at the Cape, come back to manage the branch, marry Alice, and reside in the neighbourhood of the Senhorina Maraquita Letotti’s dwelling.
“You means wot you say, I s’pose?” asked Disco.
“Of course I do,” said Harold.
“An’ yer goin’ to take Jumbo as yer walley?”
“Yes.”
“H’m; I’ll go too as yer keeper.”
“My what?”
“Yer keeper—yer strait-veskit buckler, for if you ain’t a loonatic ye ought to be.”