invited him
to witness it, just as she might have invited him to come and have a
look at the garden.

"Well, Mr Denham," said Verna, as the red-painted top-knots of the two
women vanished round the doorpost, "and what do you think of me in my
capacity of shop-girl?"

"If I were to tell you I should lay myself open to another rebuke," he
answered, with a laugh in his eyes.

"Have I been so hard on you as that? I didn't mean to be. By the way,
you are not smoking. Try some of this," reaching down an open bag of
Magaliesberg from a shelf.

"Thanks. I say, what's this?" looking at the bullet hole in the wall.

"Oh, that's nothing," she answered rather shamefacedly. "At least, you
heard all about it down at Ezulwini. Anyway, it's nothing to brag
about. Let's go outside."

"Certainly," acquiesced Denham, grasping, with ready tact, that she did
not wish to pursue the subject. And he was right. Even as in the
matter of shooting the koodoo she shrank from dwelling upon anything
that would tend to set her forth in his eyes as a strong, self-reliant
Amazon type of woman; more so now than then.

"I wish I was more like other girls, Mr Denham," she broke forth with
that winning, breezy naturalness which had so struck him. "If I were
musical, for instance, and all that, I could play to you of an evening.
I'm afraid you must find the evenings so slow."

"I've only had one evening here, and I didn't find that a bit slow," he
answered. "Incidentally, the other evenings we have spent together have
been anything but slow."

"Together!" There was something in the word, and the way in which he
said it, that struck curiously upon her ears.

"I'm glad of that," she answered. "One always thinks that anybody out
from England, accustomed to the livelier sides of life, must become
hideously bored in an out-of-the-way wilderness such as this really is."

"It's a very beautiful wilderness, anyway," he said, looking out over
the great panorama of mountain and plain and forest, extending over
fifty miles, and misty in the heat of the unclouded sunlight. "But
that's where you make the mistake. The very contrast is so infinitely
restful. Not only restful, but invigorating. Slow! Think, for
instance, of all the vividly interesting stories and reminiscences your
father has been telling me since we first met, and especially during our
journey here. Why, they make this wonderful country simply glow with
life--and such life!