"You seem rather to forget, gentlemen," remarked Everest coldly, "that this whole camp and expedition was organised by me solely for Regina; and the first shot at lion really belongs to her. Our guests joined us afterwards as—er—an afterthought."
This silenced the guests. St John flung himself down on another camp-stool and began to clean his gun, muttering to himself it was always like this when you had women about. Merton looked as if he could have strangled his sister, the doctor turned to a hanging flamingo and fingered his rosy wing in silence.
"That's quite right, Everest, you're the boss of this show," Merton said, after a second. "You arrange the thing any way you like."
"Why won't you stay with me?" pleaded Sybil, looking up at Everest.
"Because I don't choose to," he returned, almost brutally for him, so great was the contrast to his usual voice and manner. "You are making yourself absolutely ridiculous. I will ask Regina to stay with you to take care of you, but if she refuses you'll have to stay alone."
He turned to the others.
"I'll go over and ask her and then come back to you and we can fix up our plans. I think if we could ride out to the ridge to-night in the cool, and be round those water-holes just after dawn, that's about the best we can do."
"Right! Anything you say, Everest," Merton responded, and the others grunted assent.
"Come, Sybil, you'd better go back to the dining tent and wait for me there till I've seen Regina," Everest said peremptorily, and they went out of the tent together.