Too clever for tangible disparagement that would challenge Norah's loyalty, Dick applied himself silently to supply all that Archie in two years had left undone. Dick's 'boy' hung the pictures that had stood, faces wallwards, for eighteen months; Dick stretched an insect-proof ceiling of calico that he took from his stores of presents for headmen; Dick's carriers dug and levelled the flower garden that Archie had always promised 'next season.'
His long limbs and cool, unhurried gestures, his well-cut white flannels, and the faint swagger with which he wore them, had the unquestioned advantage of Archie's unremarkable presence.
In long tête-à-têtes he exerted all his charm of manner and person.
An afternoon when Nature seemed to work for him was the shooting expedition that he had promised. In deference to the foot, which furnished the excuse of his stay, it was decided to paddle down river to the flats where puku grazed and where at nightfall duck flighted.
Papyrus met over their heads in a tunnel of green silence, that the plash of a paddle hardly broke.
'If this would never end,' sighed Dick.
Norah shrugged her shoulders.
'"Momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
she quoted, as the stream bore them out into the daylight.
A bird like a black ibis, rigid and heraldic on the bank that here was firm and covered with short turf, kept jealous watch on the surface of the water. Their silent passage barely disturbed his fishing. Half-way between the river and the straight edge of the bush a pair of Karongo crane, true season after season to each other and their haunts, promenaded the flats. Their long necks swayed to their leisurely, fastidious stride.