Claverton had been on very intimate terms with the Brathwaites some years previously. They had been good friends to him in the earlier days of his wandering life, and he had a warm regard for them. It was more than pleasant, he thought, being among them again, laughing over many a reminiscence evoked by the jest-loving Jim as they strolled towards the house.

The long, low dining-room looked invitingly cool after the glare and heat outside. Mrs Brathwaite, who was seated at the table, scolded them playfully for keeping breakfast waiting. Beside her sat a girl--a beautiful creature, with large blue eyes fringed with curling lashes, and a sparkling, dimpled rosebud of a face made for capriciousness and kisses. The ma.s.ses of her golden hair, drawn back from the brows, were allowed to fall in a rippling shower below her waist, and a fresh, cool morning-dress set off her neat little figure to perfection.

"Arthur. This is my niece, Ethel," said Mrs Brathwaite.

Claverton started ever so slightly and bowed. He was wondering where on earth this vision of loveliness had suddenly dropped from in this out-of-the-way place. And Mr Brathwaite had said, "My brother's _children_."

The girl shot one glance at him from under the curling lashes as she acknowledged the introduction, and a gleam of merriment darted across the bright face. Each had been trying to read off the other, and each had detected the other in the act. She turned away to greet her cousin.

"Why, what in the world has brought _you_ here?" cried that jovial blade in his hearty voice. "We weren't expecting you for ever so long.

Where's Laura?"

"The Union Company's steamer _Basuto_. Cobb and Co, and Mr Jeffreys'

trap. Laura's in the next room. One question at a time, please."

Jim roared with laughter as he took his seat at the table. Between himself and Ethel much sparring took place whenever the pair got together.

"Sharp as ever, by Jingo," he cried. "I say, Ethel, I wonder you haven't been quodded for bribery and corruption. They say Uncle George only gets returned by sending you round to tout for votes."

The point of this joke lay in the fact that her father was a fervid politician and a member of the Legislative a.s.sembly. Before Ethel could retort, a diversion was created by the entrance of Mr Brathwaite and his other niece. Laura was her sister's junior by a year, and as unlike her as it was possible to be. She was a slight, graceful girl, with dark hair and eyes, and as quiet and demure in manner as the other was merry and impulsive; and though falling far short of her sister in actual beauty, yet when interested her face would light up in a manner that was very attractive. So thought, at any rate, our friend Hicks, on whom, during her last visit at Seringa Vale, Laura had made an impression. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Hicks was very hard hit indeed.

"Really, those two are too bad," said Mrs Brathwaite. "Beginning to fight before they have been five minutes together. Isn't it too bad of them, Arthur?"

He appealed to, looked up just in time to catch Ethel's glance of defiance which said as plainly as words: "You mind your own business."

She was not going to defer to the opinions of this stranger, and did not see why he should be called upon to decide in the matter. No doubt he had come out there with the notion that they were a mere set of half-civilised, ignorant colonials whom it was his business to set right. Those new arrivals from England always gave themselves such airs, and expected to have everything their own way. That might do with the old people and good-natured Jim, but it would not go down with her, Ethel Brathwaite, aged nineteen, and she intended to let him know it.

She had taken a dislike to this new arrival, which he saw at once, and the idea rather entertained him.

"Uncle, I declare Jim gets worse and worse as he grows older. Yes-- older, Jim, for you're quite grey since I saw you last, you know. How are you, Mr Hicks?" she continued, as that tardy youth entered the room. "Have you shot your twenty backs yet? You know we said last year we should vote you out of our good opinion unless you could show as twenty pairs of horns fairly killed by your own gun when next we met?"

"Well, not yet," was the answer, somewhat reluctantly given.

"As you are strong, be merciful," put in Claverton, thereby drawing down upon himself another indignant glance.

Our friend Hicks, like many a greater man, had his weaknesses. One of these was a pa.s.sion for sport. He would lay himself out to the most arduous labours in the heat of the day, and forego many an hour of well-earned rest at night, in the pursuit of his favourite pastime. Not that his efforts were always crowned with the success they deserved-- indeed, it was the exception rather than the rule if they were so--but the mere pleasure of having his gun in his hand, expecting, Micawber-like, something to turn up, satisfied him. When he first came to Seringa Vale he had been in the habit of starting off in quest of game at times when by no possibility could he have obtained a shot, and under such circ.u.mstances had been known to empty his gun at such small fry as spreuws or meercats rather than not discharge it at all. But whatever he let off his gun at, it didn't make the least difference to the object under fire. He never hit anything, and much good-humoured chaff was habitually indulged in at his expense. "He couldn't hit a house, couldn't Hicks," Mr Brathwaite was wont to observe jocosely, "unless he were put inside and all the doors and shutters barred up."

Which witticism Jim would supplement by two or three of his own. But the subject of this rallying was the very essence of good humour. He didn't mind any amount of chaff, and devoted himself to the pursuit of _ferae naturae_ with a perseverance which was literally as laid down by the copy-books--its own reward.

"I move that we all go down and look at the ostriches," suggested Ethel, ever anxious to be on the move.

"Who seconds that?" said Jim, looking around. "Now, then, Arthur!"

"As junior member my innate modesty forbids," was the reply.

"That is meant satirically, Mr Claverton," cried Ethel. "You deserve to be voted out of the expedition, and if you don't apologise you shall be."

"Then I withdraw the innate modesty. What--that not enough? Then there's nothing for it but a pistol or a pipe. Of the two evils here goes for the pipe. Hicks, we haven't blown our cloud this morning." He saw how the land lay.

"Er--well, you see--er--that is--er--I mean," stammered Hicks, who, good-natured fellow, shrank from refusing outright. "Er--the fact is, I've got to go down and feed the ostriches some time, so I may as well go now."

"Well, I am surprised at _you_, Mr Hicks," said Ethel. "So the pleasure of our company counts as nothing. You deserve to be put on the stool of repentance too."

"But really that's just what I meant--er--that is, I mean--it does, you know--but--" stuttered the unlucky youth, putting his foot in it deeper and deeper.

Laura had fled into another room under the pretext of finding her hat, whence a stifled sob of suppressed laughter was audible now and again.

The originator of this turn of affairs was imperturbably sticking a penknife through and through a piece of card, and contemplating the actors in it as if he were unconscious of anything humorous in the situation, though in reality he was repressing, with an effort, an overpowering desire to go outside and roar for five minutes.

"Good-bye, Mr Claverton," said Ethel, with a mock bow, and emphasising the first word. She was rather disappointed at his ready acquiescence in her ostracism of him, as it upset a little scheme of vengeance she had been forming.

"Say rather 'Au reservoir,' for your way, I believe, lies past the dam."

"Oh-h!" burst from the whole party at the villainy of the pun, as they left him.

"I'm afraid your friend is a dreadful firebrand; Ethel and he will fight awfully," said Laura to Hicks as they walked down to the large enclosure. These two had fallen behind, and Hicks was in the seventh heaven of delight. The mischief of it was that the arrangement would be of such short duration. Some twenty yards in front Ethel was keeping her aunt and Jim in fits of laughter.

"Let me carry that for you," said Hicks, pouncing upon a tiny apology for a basket which was in her hand.

"No, no; you've got quite enough to carry," she replied, referring to a large colander containing the daily ration of maize for the ostriches, and which formed his burden on the occasion.

"Not a bit of it. Look, I can carry it easily. Do let me," he went on in his eagerness.

"Take care, or you'll drop the other," said she.

The warning was just one shade too late. Down came the colander, its contents promptly burying themselves in the long gra.s.s. The salvage which Hicks managed to effect was but a very small fraction of the original portion.

"There now, I've spilt all the mealies," said he, ruefully, eyeing the scattered grain. He was not thinking of its intrinsic value, but that the necessity of going back for more would do him out of the two or three hundred yards left to him of his walk with Laura.

"Your friend would say 'it's of no use crying over spilt mealies.'

Never mind, we can go back and get some more."

"What!" he exclaimed, delightfully. "Do you mean to say you'll go all the way back with me? But really I can't let you take all that trouble," he added, with reluctant compunction.

"I mean to say I'll go _all_ the way back with you, and I intend 'to take _all_ that trouble' with or with out permission," she replied, looking up at him with a saucy gleam in her eyes.

Close to the storeroom they came upon Claverton. He was sitting on the disselboom of a tent-waggon smoking a pipe, and meditatively shying pebbles at an itinerant scarabaeus, which was wandering aimlessly about on a sun-baked open patch of ground about seven yards off.

"Well, has your sister thought better of it, and removed the ban?" asked he, as the two came up.

"No, she hasn't," answered Laura, "but I see you're penitent, so I will do so on her behalf. You may come down with us," she added, demurely.

She knew he would do nothing of the sort, so could safely indulge the temptation to mischief.

Poor Hicks was on thorns. "Yes, come along, Claverton," he chimed in, mechanically, in the plenitude of his self-abnegation fondly imagining that his doleful tones were the acme of cordiality.

"Well, I think I will," pretended Claverton, making a feint at moving.

Hicks' countenance fell, and Laura turned away convulsed. "Don't know, though; think I'll join you later. I must go in and get a fresh fill; my pipe's gone out," and he sauntered away to Hicks' great relief, as he and Laura started off to rejoin the others at the ostrich camp.

The male bird was very savage, and no sooner did he descry the party, than he came bearing down upon them from the far end of the enclosure.

"What a grand fellow!" exclaimed Ethel, putting out her hand to stroke the long serpentine neck of the huge biped, who, so far from appreciating the caress, resented it by pressing the stone wall with his hard breast-bone as though he would overthrow it, and making the splinters fly with a vicious kick or two, in his futile longing to get at and smash the whole party. And standing there in all the bravery of his jet-black array, the snowy plumes of his wings dazzling white in the sun as he waved them in wrathful challenge, he certainly merited to the full the encomium pa.s.sed upon him. Hicks emptied the contents of the colander, which brought the hen bird running down to take her share--a mild-eyed, grey, un.o.btrusive-looking creature. She stood timidly pecking on the outside of the "spread," every now and again running off some twenty yards as her tyrannical lord made at her, with a sonorous hiss, aiming a savage kick at her with his pointed toe.