“Oh, don’t!” cried Eirene, with an ostentatious groan, as she pulled off a sadly disfigured little shoe. “I have heard you talking in that way for hours—pretending, always pretending. ‘These are the Shinwari Hills, all brown and burnt and bare. Below in the valley is the tower of a Waziri chief. There is an Afridi force waiting for us round the next corner. We are carrying rifles and rations and water-bottles and all sorts of utterly useless things——’”
“I appeal to you,” protested Wylie to Zoe; “did I really talk such piffle as all that? If I did, our misfortunes must have turned my brain.”
“Oh, you didn’t say exactly those things,” said Eirene—“though I heard the names so often that I know they are right—but it was always that sort of thing, pretending that there was eternal snow on one side and a precipice a mile deep on the other, instead of disagreeable rough hills, covered with ugly trees, which are always either tripping you up with their roots, or knocking off your hat with their branches. In a day or two I shall have to wear a handkerchief on my head like a peasant woman,” and she contemplated ruefully the remains of her hat, which had started in life as a smart straw, with a peculiarly deceptive and Parisian air of simplicity about it. “And instead of noble, chivalrous Orientals”—a protest from Wylie—“with snow-white robes and splendid turbans, we have these detestable rogues who call themselves Christians, with kilts black with dirt, and no more feeling than a stone. What is the use of pretending about it?”
“It seems to have called up heroic and romantic visions in your mind, at any rate,” said Zoe, “and that ought to have lightened the tedium of the march.”
“And, anyhow, I didn’t inflict it on you,” said Maurice.
“Indeed you did not. You were too cross or too miserable—I don’t know which—to talk, so that I heard the others the whole time.”
“Awfully sorry to have bored you,” said Wylie. “You see, I thought it might help your sister along if I drew on my recollections of old days.”
“It did,” cried Zoe. “I don’t believe I could have kept up without it. Why did you listen, if you were bored, Eirene?”
“It wasn’t that exactly,” explained Eirene; “but it seemed so silly. We are not children; what good can it do to pretend?”
“If it helps us to bear things more cheerfully, surely that’s some good?” suggested Zoe.