CHAPTER III.
A QUESTION OF ETIQUETTE—THE FAIR HUNTER
DISCUSSED—LIONS VISIT US AT NIGHT.
"What!" exclaimed Harry and Jack simultaneously.
"Yes, it's a woman, and she shot an elephant this afternoon."
Another exclamation of astonishment followed my assertion, and then Harry asked:
"Who is she?"
"Her name is Miss Boland," I answered; "at least that's what she told me, and she said her companion was Mrs. Roberts. They came from Walvisch Bay, and that's pretty much all I know about them."
Then I explained the circumstances under which we met, and detailed the conversation, word for word, as nearly as I could remember it.
The information almost broke up the dinner of my companions. That a woman, or two women, should take to hunting big game in South Africa was enough to take away any man's breath, and with his breath gone there was not much chance for him to need an appetite. Both of them stopped eating long enough to allow me to take the choicest cuts of the hippopotamus, and if I had managed the affair shrewdly, and maintained a good deal of mystery about the matter, I think I might have stolen the entire dinner. But when I said that was all I knew about it, their appetites returned, and they fell to eating again with their accustomed vigor.
"We must go and call on them to-morrow morning," said Harry. "Pity we haven't a barber and a tailor and a fashionable bootmaker here on the borders of the Luranga River."