"Yes, distinctly. I have just heard there is to be a special train made up--we are in too late for the regular mail-train, you know. So I shall leave for Kimberley in about two or three hours' time." Lilith looked disappointed. "I thought you would have stayed here at least a few days," she said. And then the friends who had met her on board returned, and Laurence found himself introduced to three pretty girls--fair-haired, blue-eyed, well-dressed--eke to a man--tall, brown-faced, loosely hung, apparently about thirty years of age--none of whose names he could quite succeed in catching, save that the latter was apostrophized as "George." Then, after a commonplace or two, good-byes were uttered and they separated--Lilith and her party to catch the train for Mowbray, her late fellow-passenger to arrange for his own much longer journey. Having the compartment to themselves, one of the blue-eyed girls opened fire thus: "Lilith, who is he?" "Who?" "He." "Bless the child," laughed Lilith, "there were about half a hundred he's." "No, there was only one. Who is he? What is he?" "I don't know," replied Lilith, affecting ignorance no longer. "You don't know? After three weeks on board ship together? Three whole weeks of ship life, and you have the face to tell me you don't know anything about him. After the way in which you said good-bye to each other, too? Oh, I saw." "Well, I don't know." "Or care?" "Chaff away, if it's any fun to you," answered Lilith quite serenely, as the trio rippled into peals of laughter. "I liked the man, liked to talk to him on board--you are welcome to the admission--but all I know is that he is going to Johannesburg. We may never see each other again." "These English Johnnies who come out here, and whom one knows nothing about, are now and again slippery fish," gruffly spoke the brown-faced one. "Watch it, Lilith." "I thought this one looked as if he might be interesting," said another of the blue-eyed girls. "Pity he wasn't staying a day or two. We might have got him out to the house and seen what he was made of." "Watch it," repeated George sententiously. "Watch it, Lilith." Meanwhile, the object of this discussion--and warning--having resignedly "passed" the Customs at the dock gates, was spinning townwards in one of the innumerable hansoms. Sizing up the South African metropolis, it gave him the idea of a mud city, just dumped down wet and left to dry in the sun. Its general aspect suggested the vagaries of some sportive Titan, who, from the summit of the lofty rock wall behind it, had amused himself, out of office hours, by chucking down chunks of clay of all sorts and sizes, trying how near he could "lob" them into the position of streets and squares.