ered easily, and as if the other matter had clean
passed from her mind. "I'm thinking of going in for native studies.
Would they catch on in Europe should you think, Mr Elvesdon?"

"They'd have the advantage of originality, at any rate," he answered. A
merry peal escaped Edala.

"What a good _official_ reply," she cried. "Never mind, Mr Elvesdon.
I like it. If you had declared they could not do otherwise I don't know
what I should have thought of you, if only that never having seen a
sample you couldn't possibly know that they were any good at all."

"Why, obviously," rejoined Elvesdon, secretly pleased with himself for
having refrained from giving utterance to a second banality. "I'm
afraid I'm too old to launch out into paying compliments; and"--he added
slyly--"too _official_."

Thornhill chuckled. He, silently emitting puffs of smoke, was watching
the battle of wits between the pair and keenly enjoying it. Moreover he
rejoiced that Edala should have found a foeman worthy of her steel, one
with whom she could sharpen wits. It would relieve the dulness of her
life, render her more contented perhaps. Nor did the admiration which
would now and then shine out prominently in the eyes of their visitor,
when the latter was animated, and therefore off his guard, escape him.
So he listened, and smoked complacently, as they branched off from one
topic to another, sometimes indulging in a passage of arms, frequently
agreeing enthusiastically. Yes, it was a pleasant way of getting
through the morning of a "day of rest."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

HER "AERIAL THRONE."

"I know what we must do this afternoon, father," said Edala, when dinner
was nearly over. "We'll take Mr Elvesdon to the top of Sipazi."

Elvesdon looked puzzled.

"Do you mean on to the roof, Miss Thornhill?" he said.

The girl went off into another merry peal; the point of the joke being
that the farm was so named, after a certain striking mountain which
stood opposite, but this their visitor did not know.

"I don't believe you meant that seriously," she said.

"But I did. Why not?"

"When you come to know your own district a little better, Mr Elvesdon,"
she pronounced with mock severity, "you will know that that flat topped
mountain over there beyond the kloof--the one with that splendid red
krantz at the top--is called Sipazi-pazi, on account of the glimmer
which seems to set it on fire when the sun gets on to it at a certain
angle."

"G