"But you are not to. I'm certain that however it turns out it will be too good to treat in that way." "Oh, Mr Blachland, I am surprised at such a speech from you," she said, her eyes dancing with mischief. "Why, that's the sort of thing that English boy might have said. But you! Oh!" "Well, I mean it. You know I never hesitate to criticise and that freely. Look at our standing fight over detail in foreground, as a flagrant instance." The drawing under discussion was a water-colour sketch of the house and its immediate surroundings. He would treasure it as a reminder after he had gone, he declared, when asking her to undertake it. To which she had rejoined mischievously that he seemed in a great hurry to talk about "after he had gone," considering that he had only just come. Now the entrance of George Bayfield and his youngest born put an end to the discussion, and soon they sat down to supper. "Man, Mr Blachland, but that is a _mooi_ buck," began the boy. "Jafta says he never saw a _mooi-er_ one." "Perhaps it'll bring you luck," said Lyn, looking exceedingly reposeful and sweet, behind the tea-things, in her twenty-year-old dignity at the head of the table. "I don't know," was the reply. "I did something once that was supposed to bring frightful ill-luck, and for a long time it seemed as if it was going to. But--indirectly it had just the opposite effect." "Was that up-country, Mr Blachland?" chimed in the boy eagerly. "Do tell us about it." "Perhaps some day, Fred. But it's a thing that one had better have left alone." "These children'll give you no peace if you go on raising their curiosity in that way," said Bayfield. "I'll go up-country when I'm big," said the boy. "Are you going again, Mr Blachland?" "I don't know, Fred. You see, I've only just come down." The boy said no more on the subject. He had an immense admiration for their guest, who, when they were alone together, would tell him tales of which he never wearied--about hunting and trading, and Lo Bengula, and experiences among savages far wilder and more formidable than their own half-civilised and wholly deteriorated Kaffirs. But he was sharp enough to notice that at other times the subject of "up-country" was not a favourite one with Blachland. Perhaps the latter was tired of it as he had had so much. At any rate, with a gumption rare in small boys of his age, Fred forbore to worry the topic further. This was one of those evenings which the said guest was wont to prize now, and was destined in the time to come to look back upon as among the very happiest experiences of his life. He regarded his host indeed with a whole-hearted envy, that such should be his daily portion. There was just enough sharpness in the atmosphere to render indoors and a bright, snug fire in a well-lighted room especially reposeful and cosy, as they adjourned to the sitting-room where Lyn's piano was.