'I'm three parts glad I didn't get a shot,' said Norah, as she rejoined the canoe.
Dick commended her gentleness.
'Puku are such gallant little chaps,' she said, 'and they take such a lot of killing. Archie wounded one that dropped after she had run a mile. When they cut her up, they found the bullet in her heart."
This gave Dick a chance to talk about the state in which at an autopsy his heart would be found.
Norah laughed. 'You'll have forgotten I exist by the time you've been a week in London,' she prophesied.
Dick said this was hardly fair. It was seven years since he'd seen her last, and all the time...
'Anyhow it took you a good few minutes to recognise me in the bush,' she reminded him.
'But you'd grown more lovely yet,' he protested. 'And in breeches....'
The river had widened out into a sort of lake. Reeds grew up through the water and blue lotuses starred its surface. A couple of small red-headed moorhens bobbed up from under the broad leaves as if they were made of cork.
This is a good place to wait for the duck to come over,' said Norah, and Dick fixed his twelve bore.