"Oh, child, don't be so wildly exasperating. You know perfectly well who I mean." Then Nidia lifted her eyes with a gleam of delightful mischief in them. "I have a notion you are ungrammatical, Govvie. I am almost sure you ought to have said `_whom_ I mean.' Well, we won't be particular about that. But, as my American adorer, `Major' Shackleton, would say, `Oh, do drive on,' By the way, is he the man I am encouraging?" What was to be done with such a girl as this? But Susie Bateman was not to be put off. "You know perfectly well that I mean John Ames." "Oh! Now you're talking, as my `Major' aforesaid would rejoin. And so I encourage John Ames, do I? Poor fellow! he seems to need it." There was an unconscious softness wherewith these words were uttered. It drove the other frantic, "Need it indeed! On the contrary, what he needs is discouragement, and plenty of it. Well, he gets it from me, at any rate." "Oh yes, he does," came the softly spoken interpolation. "Well, but, Nidia, how much further is this thing to go? Why, the man comes here and talks to you as if you belonged to him; has a sort of taken-possession-of-you way about him that it's high time to put an end to." "And if he had not `taken possession' of me in that ghastly place on the Umgwane, and kept it ever since, where would I be now?" came the placid rejoinder. "Yes, I know. That is where the mischief came in. It was partly my fault for ever encouraging the man's acquaintance. I might have known he would be dangerous. There is that about him so different to the general run of them that would make him that way to one like yourself, Nidia. Yes; I blame myself." "Yes; he is different to the general ruck, isn't he?" rejoined Nidia, with a softness in her wide-opened eyes that rather intensified than diminished the bitterness of her friend and mentor. "Well, at any rate he is nobody in particular," flashed out the latter, "and probably hasn't got a shilling to his name; and now I hear he has resigned his appointment"--again that provoking smile, "Once for all, Nidia; do you intend to marry him?" "Marry who? John Ames?" "Yes," with a snap. "He hasn't asked me." The innocent artlessness of the tone, the look of absolute and childlike simplicity in the blue eyes as the answer came tranquilly forth, would have sent a bystander into convulsions. It sent Mrs Bateman out of the room in a whirlwind of wrath. After her went the offender. "Don't get mad, Susie. I can't help being a tease, can I? I was built that way. Come along out, and we'll drop in on some other frightened and beleaguered female, and swap camp and laager gossip." But the other refused. She was seriously put out, she said, and never felt less like going anywhere. So Nidia, who understood her--at times, somewhat crusty--friend thoroughly, and managed her accordingly, put on her hat and went alone.