'You must let me take you out,' Ward interrupted.
'But what about your foot?' said Norah innocently.
She explained that she always wanted to invite her relations from England for shooting trips, but her husband could not leave his work to meet them at rail-head, and take them about the country.
'A farmer's wife sees a different side of Central Africa to the traveller who makes a short shooting trip to a good game area and goes back to London to write a book about it.'
'Is that one for me?' asked Ward penitently.
'No, one for myself,' she sighed, 'before I came out I believed it all.'
So Norah chattered on. She did not get much chattering on the farm. Her rare visitors, if women, talked about recipes and jam making. The men talked of game or natives. If Dick was a ghost from the past, ghosts can be very entertaining. And he was handsomer than ever.
Dick thought the same of Norah. Norah, in the formality of V.A.D. uniform, was only less fascinating than Norah in the boyishness of her farm wear—silk shirt open at the neck, breeches and canvas leggings. In Dick's opinion most women he had seen in breeches looked either bulbous or cinematographical; Norah was a twentieth century hamadryad—cool and restrained, save for her narrow eyes and her short dark hair that bubbled out from under her wide grey hat. The sun had burnt her neck to the colour of coffee and cream, but her arms still hinted at the whiteness of her body.
Dick could not keep his eyes off her.
'Lunch will be foul,' she was saying. 'My suk has gone to bury his father.'