sed the sense of antagonism when, for the
instant, she departed from his ideals of what she ought to be. And
yet, Weldon was candid enough to admit to himself that she departed
from them, rather than fell below them. Often as she had antagonized
him, she had never really disappointed him.

As for Alice Mellen, he confessed himself surprised. Gathering
together all that Ethel had ever told him of her cousin, of her
living her entire life out there in the southern end of South
Africa, of her desire to be a nurse, he had pieced together an
effigy of the combined traits of a Hottentot and a vivandiere. This
girl answered to neither description. Her clothes and her manners
and her accent all had come, albeit with slow indirectness, from
London. Not only would she and her gowns pass muster in a crowd; but
furthermore she would end by being the focal point of a good share
of that crowd. Nevertheless, Weldon found it impossible to discover
her most distinctive point. Even while he sought it, he wondered to
himself whether this might not be another cousin of whom he had
never heard. The women doctors and nurses at home wore stout shoes
and had pockets let in at the seams of their frocks, useful,
doubtless, but with an unlovely tendency to yawn and show their
contents. This girl was a mere fluff of pale yellow organdie which
brought out the purplish lights in her ink-black hair.

"Did you have the heart to disturb her?" he asked, reverting to the
subject of Syb's nap.

"I was forced to. She was on all the cushions, and I needed one for
myself. She took it in good part, though. She told me she had been
disturbed, the night before, by the snoring of the parrot, two rooms
away. As a result, she left me feeling that the apology really ought
to come from me."

"Is that the way of the race?" Weldon queried, as he set down his
empty cup. "If so, you make me tremble."

"Why?"

"Because, without in the least intending it, I have accumulated a
boy."

She looked up suddenly.

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know how. It apparently did itself. It was the day before
we went out to be fired at, and he said his name was Kruger Roberts,
and I fed him some empty jam tins."

"A huge black boy with bristly hair?" she interpolated.

"Yes, and a mouth so large that one wonders how his face can hold it
all."

She sat up alertly, resting her folded arms on the edge of the
table.

"This becomes interesting. Kruger Roberts is Syb's avowe