untry and get bowled
out with fever or struck by a nigger, and all that sort of thing,
because one girl don't care a cent for you."

"Perhaps not. Still, I hate this place now. I'm sick of it. By the way,
Stanninghame, you're the sort a fellow can tell anything to; you don't
start a lot of cheap blatant chaff as some chappies do when you want
them to talk sound sense."

There was a great deal underlying the remark, also the tone. Though
lacking the elements which go to make up the "popular" man, Laurence
possessed the faculty of winning the devoted attachment of individuals,
and that to an extent of which he himself little dreamed. Not the least
important item which went to make up that attribute lay in the fact that
he was a most indulgent listener, whom nothing astonished, and who could
look at all sides of any given question with the tact and toleration of
a man who thinks. This faculty he seldom exercised, and then almost
unconsciously.

To the other's remark he made no immediate reply. Taking into
consideration age and temperament, he had no belief that Holmes'
rejection and disappointment had left any deep wound. Still, it had come
at an unfortunate time--a time when the sufferer, in common with most of
them, had been hard hit in a more material way. He had a genuine liking
for the sunny-natured, open-hearted youth; a liking begotten, it might
be, of the ingenuously unconscious manner in which the latter looked up
to him, in fact, made a sort of elder brother of him. Holmes was no
stronger-headed than most youngsters of his temperament and
circumstances, and Laurence did not want to see him--soured and dejected
by disappointment all round--throw himself in with the reckless,
indiscriminate bar-frequenter, of whom there were not lacking woeful
examples in those days, though, poor fellows, much from the same motive,
to drown care; and into this current would Holmes in all probability be
swept if left by himself in Johannesburg. Was there no method of taking
him with them for a month or two's shoot in the bush-veldt, and sending
him back by some returning expedition before the serious part of the
undertaking was entered upon? He decided to sound Hazon upon the
matter, yet of this resolve he said nothing now to Holmes. The latter
broke the silence.

"By Jove, Stanninghame, I envy you!" he said. "You are such a
hard-headed chap. Why, I don't believe you care a little d---- for any
mortal thing in the world. Yes, I