er beauty and her
cleverness--cleverness!--it was a great deal more than that, there
was really nothing she couldn't do; he fully believed, had it been
necessary, she would have been a genius at anything--in spite of the
fact that her parents adored her, and she them, and they'd as soon let
her go all that way as... In spite of every single thing you could think
of, so terrific was his love that he couldn't help hoping. Well, was
it hope? Or was this queer, timid longing to have the chance of looking
after her, of making it his job to see that she had everything she
wanted, and that nothing came near her that wasn't perfect--just love?
How he loved her! He squeezed hard against the chest of drawers and
murmured to it, "I love her, I love her!" And just for the moment he was
with her on the way to Umtali. It was night. She sat in a corner asleep.
Her soft chin was tucked into her soft collar, her gold-brown lashes lay
on her cheeks. He doted on her delicate little nose, her perfect lips,
her ear like a baby's, and the gold-brown curl that half covered it.
They were passing through the jungle. It was warm and dark and far away.
Then she woke up and said, "Have I been asleep?" and he answered, "Yes.
Are you all right? Here, let me--" And he leaned forward to... He bent
over her. This was such bliss that he could dream no further. But it
gave him the courage to bound downstairs, to snatch his straw hat from
the hall, and to say as he closed the front door, "Well, I can only try
my luck, that's all."

But his luck gave him a nasty jar, to say the least, almost immediately.
Promenading up and down the garden path with Chinny and Biddy, the
ancient Pekes, was the mater. Of course Reginald was fond of the mater
and all that. She--she meant well, she had no end of grit, and so on.
But there was no denying it, she was rather a grim parent. And there had
been moments, many of them, in Reggie's life, before Uncle Alick died
and left him the fruit farm, when he was convinced that to be a widow's
only son was about the worst punishment a chap could have. And what made
it rougher than ever was that she was positively all that he had. She
wasn't only a combined parent, as it were, but she had quarrelled with
all her own and the governor's relations before Reggie had won his first
trouser pockets. So that whenever Reggie was homesick out there, sitting
on his dark veranda by starlight, while the gramophone cried, "Dear,
what is Life but