John Ames, ignoring the coldness of his hostess' greeting, noticed that fully a quarter of an hour went by before they sat down to table. When they did sit down the interior of the hut looked snug enough. The bright lamp shed a cheerful glow upon the white napery and silver forks; and pictures and knick-knacks upon the walls and about the room--or rather, the hut, for such it was--rendered the place pleasant and homelike, suggestive of anything but the wilds of savage Matabeleland. Any remark, however, which he addressed to his hostess was met by a curt monosyllable, she turning immediately to converse with Crosse, affably voluble. It mattered nothing. He had only consented to come upon Inglefield's urgent and repeated invitation, having experienced that sample of behaviour before. "What sort of a time did you have down in Cape Town, Ames?" said Crosse presently, 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?"