"I will do that," she said; "my father must see that it would be ridiculous for us each to be taking our meals alone all the time that he was away." "Do you know, Charlie," Nita said on the second evening, "I have always thought you rather slow, and now I see that you are really nothing of the sort." Carter laughed. "I am quite conscious that I am slow, Miss Ackworth. I am not quick in taking in ideas, or in expressing my own. I often wish that it wasn't so, but I have lately been getting better. I can't chaff as most of them can, but I find myself able to join in general conversation more easily. Some day, I dare say, I shall become quite a conversationalist." "How very serious you are!" she said; "you talk with me as if I were a woman, and not, as most of the others do, as a little girl to be chaffed." CHAPTER II ATTACKED "Have you got another uniform, Charlie?" the girl asked on the following evening. "Certainly I have," Carter answered in some surprise. "Well, I wish you would send it over here." "Send it over here, Miss Ackworth! What on earth do you want it for?" "Well, it is this. It is as well to be prepared for all contingencies. I certainly do not mean to be carried away, if the fort should be captured, and made the slave of some Afridi chief. If I find things going badly I shall run back here and put on the uniform, cut my hair off short, and then go out and fight till the last. It would be a thousand times better to be killed fighting than to be captured." "Certainly it would," the young officer said gravely; "it would be a hard lot for a woman to be carried off a captive by these Afridis." "Very well, then, you will lend me a uniform?" "Yes I will, Miss Ackworth, but I should advise you to keep the last bullet in your revolver for yourself." "I mean to," she said, "but something might happen; I might fall seriously wounded and be unable to use it, and then, if they found me lying wounded, they would fire a bullet into me and so finish me."