your coffee?"

"Thanks, yes. We'll go off at once then, for I have a long morning's work,
and we had better get our ride over while it's cool."

He shouted to his "boy" to order the _syces_, or grooms, to bring the
ponies.

"Where are we going today, dear?" asked the girl, putting on her pith
helmet.

"To the nursery first. I want to see if the young plants have suffered much
from that hailstorm yesterday."

"Wasn't it awful? What would people in England say if they got hailstones
like that on their heads?"

"Chunerbutty and I measured one that I picked up outside the withering
shed," said the brother. "It was a solid lump of clear ice two inches long
and one and a half broad."

"I couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen them," observed the girl. "I
wonder that everyone who is caught out in such a storm is not killed."

"Animals often are--and men, too, for that matter," replied Daleham.

Noreen tapped her smart little riding-boot with her whip.

"I'm glad we're going out to the nursery," she said. "It's my favourite
ride."

"I know it is, but I don't like taking you there, Sis," replied her
brother. "I always funk that short cut through the bit of jungle to it. I
never feel sure that we won't meet a wild elephant in it."

"Oh; but I don't believe they are dangerous; and I do love the ride through
that exquisite patch of forest. The trees look so lovely, now that the
orchids on them are in flower."

"My dear girl, get that silly idea that elephants are not dangerous out of
your head," said Daleham decidedly. "You ask any of the fellows."

"Mr. Parry says they're not."

"Old Parr's never seen any elephant but a tame one, unless it's a pink or
speckled one with a brass tail climbing up the wall of his room when he's
got D.T's. He never went out shooting in the jungle in his life. But you
ask Payne or Reynolds or any of the chaps on the other gardens who know
anything of the jungle."

The girl was unwilling to believe that her beloved forest could prove
perilous to her, and she feared lest her excursions into it should be
forbidden.

"Well, perhaps a rogue might be dangerous," she admitted grudgingly. "But I
don't believe that even a rogue would attack you unprovoked."

"Wouldn't it? From all I've heard about them I'd be very sorry to give one
of them the chance," said her brother. "I'd almost like you to meet one,
just to teach you not to be such a cocksure young woman. Lord! wouldn't I
laugh to