, when he could conversationally break away.

"Rather a good one. It was a great nuisance having to come back."

"Mr Coates was such a nice man," interpolated Mrs Inglefield, with
meaning, referring to John Ames's _locum tenens_. "We used to see a
great deal of him."

"Find any nice girls down there, eh, Ames?" said Inglefield, slily,
fully alive to the unveiled rudeness of his spouse.

"Oh yes--several."

"And one in particular, eh?" went on the other, waggishly, drawing a bow
at a venture; for John Ames was not one to wear his heart upon his
sleeve or to embark in chatter upon the subject nearest and dearest to
that organ.

"_Nice_ girls! I didn't know there were any nowadays," snapped Mrs
Inglefield. "A pack of bicycling, cigarette-smoking, forward tomboys!"

"Oh, come, Mrs Inglefield," laughed Crosse, "you mustn't be so down on
them. They're only up to date, you know."

"Up to date! Then, thank Heaven I'm not up to date; I'm only
old-fashioned," she retorted.

"I'd be sorry to wear the boots of the chip who told you so, Annie,"
pronounced Inglefield. "Besides, you're romping hard over Ames's
feelings; at least, I surmise you are. He's too close a bird to give
the show away. _But_--as poor old Corney Grain used to say."

"Oh, I always say what I mean," she answered, with an air which plainly
added: "if people don't like it so much the worse for the people." And
John Ames was thinking that never again, under any circumstances
whatever, would he sit at the table of this abominably ill-bred and
offensive woman. He was right. He never would; but for a reason that
it was as well he--and all of them seated there--did not so much as
dream.

Then, partly that subject-matter for conversation is, to isolated
dwellers in a remote wilderness, necessarily limited, partly because he
deemed it a safe topic, Inglefield led the talk round to the day's
doings--the destruction of Madula's cattle.

"It's an infernally wasteful way of getting rid of them," he said. "I
dare say you've blazed away nearer a thousand cartridges than a hundred,
eh, Ames?"

"Quite that. As you say, it is an abominable waste, and if ever the
time comes when we shall sorely need every one of those cartridges for
our own defence--"

"Oh, now you're croaking again, old chap," interrupted Inglefield; while
his spouse remarked--

"Faugh! I'd as soon be a slaughter-house butcher at once. Sooner."

"Somebody must do it, you know, M