Carter blinked at her for a moment with tired brown eyes and then pulled himself together. "I beg your pardon for not doing as you wished. But I didn't know that you were interested in niggers, if there was no chance of making a dividend out of them. I rather looked upon this as an out-of-office-hours job; as a piece of private amusement of my own, in fact, and so I did not dare to repeat it." "Well," said Kate, seating herself beside the sick man, "perhaps I was hateful to you after supper, indeed I'll admit that I was. But you are being far more hateful to me now, and as that should tickle your vanity as a man, perhaps you'll be generous enough to call it quits. Trouble, will you kindly take Mr. Carter back to the factory and give him a large dose of quinine and all the hot, scalding tea he will drink, and then put him to bed, and see to it that there are no insects inside his mosquito bar." "I fit," said the Krooboy. "An' I got bottle of White man's medicine dat I pinch from dem Cappie Image. I give dem Carter a drink of him." "You will do nothing of the sort. Dem Cappie Image patent medicine plenty bad ju-ju for Mr. Carter. So you will do exactly as I ordered you. Ah, and here's Laura. Now, my dear, if you don't want the man to whom you're engaged to die before you marry him, you'd better look after him and his health very narrowly. There, get away out of this, the pair of you, and make up your silly quarrel, whatever it may be." "But, Kate, George and I have no quarrel. Why, it was you----" "If you haven't a quarrel, my dear, invent one, if it's only for the amusement of making it up. I'm told it's one of the chief luxuries of an engagement. Now, please go, or you'll disturb Hossein. Hossein's the man who wants attention here, and I can't have you bothering about the place till he's better." Hossein was in fact the lucky man. Miss O'Neill, for reasons best known to herself, nursed him in person; Carter retained his interest as original discoverer; White-Man's-Trouble fussed round him because it was the popular thing to do, and Laura was also diligent in her attendance on the sick room for reasons well-known to herself. But Ali ben Hossein had all a Moslem gentleman's diffidence with women, and he said little enough to either Laura or Kate; the Krooboy was his caste inferior, and he spoke to him only to give curt orders; and it was to Carter alone that he was communicative. His native tongue was Haûsa, of course, but he had been a trader all his life, and that in West Africa entails a knowledge of languages. Carter knew little enough of Haûsa, but he was handy with Okky and sound on Kroo, and so when one vocabulary failed him, he passed on to another, and was generally understood. Thus, by very rapid degrees an intimacy grew between them, to as far an extent as the color barrier would permit.