recurrent, rather piquant scandal, he was not without a certain prestige in England. He had made his ranching property pay considerable profits out of the chase and cattle-breeding, and had thus pacified his most pressing creditors. He earned other large sums by acting, for three months in the dry season, as guide and arranger of big-game "shoots" to excessively rich Americans who wanted the thrill of firing into the brown of dense herds of antelope and zebra, getting perchance a maned lion without too much danger, or similarly bringing down an elephant of medium size (they would buy tusks "to go with it" from Patterne’s store), or a record rhino (Patterne supplied the "record" horn; the poor specimen killed by the millionaire was given to the Andorobo trackers to eat). Having accidentally brought to light several new varieties or sub-species of antelope among the thousands he shot for their hides and horns, he was deemed a great "naturalist" in the Cromwell Road Museum; and Roger’s anger whenever his name was mentioned—calling up as it did many a mental picture of lifeless wastes of prairie strewn with bone-heaps where once rioted a wonderful and harmless Zoological gardens—was put down to jealousy of Patterne’s marksmanship. Twice in these eight years Roger had been to England. In 1902 he had escorted his wife and sister home, and stayed there six months to make his children’s acquaintance. In 1906 he and Maud, who kept house for him at Magara in Lucy’s absence, again returned for a long holiday; and in the following year brought Lucy back with them for a last stay in the Happy Valley—a last stay, because Roger calculated on retiring from the management of the Concession in 1909. He would then sell out his shares, and on the proceeds would be wealthy enough to leave Africa to younger men and devote himself to home politics. No more, after 1909, would Lucy be torn in two in her affections, longing to be by her husband, pining in fact without him; yet miserable at the idea of her children growing up outside her care and supervision. John, as it was, showed himself devoted to the splendiferous and dazzling "Aunt Sibyl"; and even Fat Maud (no longer a dumpling, but still distinguished by this adjective from the other Maud, thirty-five years older, and spare of build) ... even Fat Maud preferred Englefield as a home to the humbler Church Farm at Aldermaston; and adopted a rather patronizing tone towards the quiet, pale-faced, languid, timid mother who had rusticated so many years in the wilds of Africa that she was ignorant of free-wheel bicycles, motor-cars, gramophones, two-step dances, ping-pong, hockey, and diabolo.