logies,
but I wouldn't hear any, telling him I quite understood his position,
and would almost certainly have acted in the same way myself. Then, our
business satisfactorily disposed of, Brian and I went round to a store
or two to procure a little clothing and a trunk, for my wardrobe was
somewhat scanty. But such things as I could procure would not have
furnished good advertisements for a first-rate London tailor or hosier.

"Don't you bother about that, Holt," Brian said. "You don't want much
in the way of clothes in our life. Fit doesn't matter--wear and
comfort's everything." And I judged I could not do better than be
guided by his experience.

We were to start early the next morning, and had nearly two days' drive
before us. This was not their district town, Brian explained to me;
indeed, it was the merest chance that he was down here at all, but his
father and a neighbour or two had been trying the experiment of shipping
their wool direct to England, and he had come down to attend to it. He
was sending the waggons back almost empty, but we would return in his
buggy. At my suggestion that my surprise visit might prove inconvenient
to his people he simply laughed.

"We don't bother about set invites in this country, Holt," he said.
"Our friends are always welcome, though of course they mustn't expect
the luxury of a first-class English hotel. You won't put us out, so
make your mind quite easy as to that."

Late in the afternoon we parted. Brian was due to drive out to a farm
eight or ten miles off--on business of a stock-dealing nature--and
sleep, but it was arranged he should call for me in the morning any time
after sunrise.

There is a superstition current to the effect that when things are at
their worst they mend, and assuredly this last experience of mine was a
case confirming it. An hour or so ago here was I, stranded, a waif and
a stray, upon a very distant shore, a stranger in a strange land,
wondering what on earth I was going to do next, either to keep myself
while in it or get out of it again. And now I had all unexpectedly
found a friend, and was about to set forth with that friend upon a
pleasure visit fraught with every delightful kind of novelty. There was
one crumple in the rose-leaf, however. We were starting early the next
morning, and I should have no opportunity of seeing Morrissey and my
excellent friends of the _Kittiwake_ again. I went round to the agents,
however, and in