er
seeing that the horses were properly watered and fed, and was
immediately accosted by Grenville with, "Hullo, Kid! you're quite a
deserter! What have you been doing all the week?"

"Do you call him Kid?" Diana asked. "What a capital name for him!"

"He has been 'The Kid' almost ever since he came to this district."

"It pays," remarked Stanley jocularly; "they give me sugar."

"And he lives with The Bear; how comical! Instead of the lion lying
down with the lamb, in Rhodesia you have The Kid feeding with The
Bear."

"Who is The Bear?" Ailsa Grenville asked, from the packing-case
cupboard, where she was reaching down cups and saucers.

"Need you ask?" queried Diana. "Doesn't Major Carew ever growl when he
is here?"

Ailsa looked much amused. "Not exactly," she said; "but I admit
sometimes he rolls himself up into a ball, so to speak, and relapses
into a sort of winter sleep."

"I hope you prod him," said Diana.

"Billy wouldn't let me," glancing affectionately at her husband.
"There is only one Major Carew for him."

"Still, it might do him good. We prodded him last night, didn't we?"
addressing Stanley. "We went right into his den, and gave him a good
baiting, while we smoked his new Abdullah cigarettes," and she smiled
gleefully at the remembrance of the stern soldier, in an astonishingly
sociable mood for him, humorously parrying her chaff. "You know," she
ran on, "he simply hated our coming. I almost wonder he didn't dig
impassable trenches across the road, or fortify himself in the
Acropolis Hill. Anyone might have thought we were the bears, and he
the woman."

"I expect he was afraid of your charms," said Grenville smilingly. "We
wilderness-dwellers have none of the townsmen's armour to withstand
fair women."

"Well, growling and scowling are very fair substitutes," quoth Diana;
"and, besides, he didn't even trouble to observe if we had charms. As
far as he decently could he looked the other way altogether."

While she chatted on, delighting the missionary and his wife with her
gaiety, Meryl sat in a low chair, and gazed through the doorway out
over the smiling country, much as Carew usually did.

"It must be very wonderful," she said at last, aroused by a
sympathetic question from Ailsa Grenville, "to live day after day with
such a scene as that in one's doorway."

"Yes," Ailsa told her. "The wonder never grows less, nor the mystery,
nor the beauty. Major Carew, when he is here, loves just t