The girl laughed. "Well, we'll put it, Captain, that the firm was decidedly dicky, and I've had a most interesting time in pulling it onto its feet. Incidentally I've given up drawing maps from an amateur's point of view, and have been drawing them with an entire eye to business in the future. You've no idea how interesting it is to a business woman, Captain, when some special information comes to her and she is able to go to her map and fill in a mile or so of river that she'd had to leave a gap for, or sketch in a newly-discovered trade route through what was thought to be hopeless swamp, or fill in part of the boundary line of territory that up to then had merely merged off into blank space." "My Crumbs," said Captain Image admiringly, "but you are a daisy, Miss Kate." "It was only the day before I left Liverpool that I got news of where the Okky territory ended. The French have been having some mysterious expedition in at the back there for purposes of their own, and the officer in command very unwisely caned the only other white man with him, who was a Zouave, and wasn't really white at all. He wanted revenge, so he came to me and told, and got fifty pounds, and said he'd never enjoyed letting off spite so much in his life before." Captain Image smacked his knee. "Daisy isn't the word for you, Miss," he affirmed, "and you can tell people I said so, if you like. A young lady that can pull the leg of these beastly foreigners in that way is worth going a long way to meet. You oughtn't to come out here to the Coast. You ought to stay at home, Miss Kate, and marry a Member of Parliament." "Poof! I wouldn't for worlds. They're all too pompous and too dull. They only talk, and pose for the newspapers; they never really do anything constructive in the House. Now, I like to do things; and if ever I marry, it will be a man who can do things that I've tried at rather better than I can do them myself. But we're getting away from the factory at Mokki. Now, the German agent doesn't know it, and I didn't feel called upon to tell him, but it's quite possible to open up trade routes to that point that don't pass through the Okky country at all. So that upsets the old King's notion of stopping the roads at present, and in the future, when he gets tired of cutting off his nose to spite his face, and tries to set trade going again, he'll find the stuff is being carried round very comfortably outside his boundary, and that there is no more blackmail to collect. How does that strike you, Captain? Now, am I a crazy woman who is bound to bust up O'Neill and Craven's if I am left long enough to it?" "I never said that," Captain Image protested violently, "and I'll wring that pious old Crewdson's neck next time I see him. That man can't carry corn. He evidently gets a heap too loose tongue if you offer him just a little civility."