it's a
silly song I learnt to sing when I was young. Don't go away; I shall
be dressed directly. If these God-forsaken railways had not such a
mania for landing you at your destination when all respectable people
are snug in bed!..." and sundry sounds suggested the impatient speaker
was flinging things about. Then a face with bright eyes appeared over
the blind, which was a wooden shutter, and could be lowered to a
discreet distance. "Hullo!... I simply had to take a look at you. I've
been pining for a glimpse of The Kid's smile and your scowl. It's been
deadly since we left Zimbabwe. Ugh!... how I hate civilisation!"

Carew looked at her with his rare, slow smile. "Is that why you keep
the whole train waiting in the station, and the station-master,
conductor, and guard in a state of ferment, because they cannot clear
the line until you are dressed?"

"Rude man!" came back the quick retort. "You haven't yet said, How do
you do?"

"How do you do, Miss Diana Pym?" gravely. "I hope I see you well! And
how did you leave Salisbury?"

"I do very nicely, thank you, Major Carew. You cannot see me very well
through a wooden shutter, I imagine. And how is your old heap of
stones?" ... with which she vanished again to the interior. "Tell the
conductor I've come to the last curl and the last hook and eye," she
called, and a few minutes later stepped out on to the platform, a
vision of fresh daintiness. "I'm rather glad," she remarked to Carew,
with a twinkle, "that you will have an opportunity of seeing us in our
best clothes"; then running on, "I see you look as fierce and
awe-inspiring as ever; but having learnt, in Rhodesia, to keep quite
calm with cockchafers and beetles running about in my bed, I am not
likely to be afraid of a bear."

"Are you going to the Grand Hotel?" Mr. Pym asked him, having joined
them while Diana was finishing her toilet, "because there is plenty of
room in our motor."

Carew thanked him, and they all moved away together. At the hotel,
however, he vanished, and it was only after a little adroit persuasion
later that Mr. Pym got him to accept an invitation to dine with them
in their private room in the evening.

And after accepting, Carew went about the work that had brought him to
Bulawayo with an uneasy mind. The fortnight that had elapsed since the
evening he found Meryl unexpectedly at the Grenvilles' had been a
somewhat disturbed one for him. For many years now his life had flown
so evenl