ou see. And the birds and beasts and insects are
in a box at my quarters. Come and get them."

"If Anne doesn't kick up a wow?" hesitated Hammy, his small brown hand
already in the larger one.

"We'll arrange it with Anne." He waited for the arrival of the
white-canopied perambulator and its fluttering-ribboned guardian to say,
with a tone and smile that won her instant suffrages: "I'm going to borrow
these children for a minute or so. Will you come into the shade and rest?
I promise not to keep you long."

Beauvayse and Lady Hannah's Captain Bingo, relieved from lookout duty, and
descending in quest of food from the Chief's particular eyrie on the roof
of Nixey's Hotel, heard shrieks of infant laughter coming from the
coffee-room. Knives, forks, and glasses had been ruthlessly swept from the
upper end of one of the tables laid for the Staff luncheon, and across the
fair expanse of linen, pounded into whiteness and occasional holes by the
vigorous thumpers of the Kaffir laundry-women, meandered a marvellous
procession of quagga and koodoo, rhino and hartebeest, lion and giraffe,
ostrich and elephant, modelled by the skilful hands of Matabele
toy-makers. Tarantula, with wicked bright eyes of shining berries, brought
up the rear, with the bee, and the mole-cricket, and, with bulgy brown,
white-striped body and long wings importantly crossed behind its back, a
tsetse of appallingly gigantic size....

"Oh, fank you, Mister Colonel," Hammy was saying, with shining eyes of
rapture fixed upon the glorious ones; "and is they weally my own, my vewy
own, for good?"

"Yours and Berta's, really and for good."

"And won't you"--Hammy's magnificent effort at disinterestedness brought
the tears into his eyes--"won't you want vem to play wif, _ever_
yourself?"

The deft hands swept the birds and beasts, with tarantula and tsetse, into
the wooden box, and lifted the children from their chairs, as Captain
Bingo and Beauvayse, following the D.A.A.G., came in, brimming with
various versions of what had happened out there on the veld....

"I have other things to play with just now, Hammy. Run along with Berta
now. You'll find your nurse in the hall."

Berta put up her face confidently to be kissed. Hammy, in manly fashion,
offered a hand--the left--the right arm being occupied with the box of
toys. As Berta's little legs scampered through the door, he delayed to
ask:

"What are your playfings, Mister Colonel?"

"Live men and b