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He could see that, now the fever-mists were melting, he was likely to be remembering for himself before long. But how could he break things to him easily without giving him a dire shock in his worn-out state? Then to him pondering, the crisis came of itself. Suddenly out of the woodland stepped a party of natives with monkey-nuts, sweet potatoes, and other wares, very cheery and smiling.
There a sullen wild-eyed mite in petticoats was being dragged along, screaming, towards distasteful durance. It was a drab picture the bleak, leaden sky above, the sloppy, miry stones below, the frowsy mothers and fathers, the motley children. "Monkey-nuts! Monkey-nuts!" croaked a wizened old woman. "Oppea! Oppea!" droned a doddering old Dutchman.
At the end of the three months, if we offered him monkey-nuts, he would snatch them from our hand and throw them at our head. He much preferred gingerbread and weak tea with plenty of sugar; and when we wanted him to leave the kitchen fire and enjoy a run in the garden, we had to carry him out swearing I mean he was swearing, of course. I quite agree with him.
Then I had to leave my little place in Kent near Seven-oaks, just as I was getting it to rights. He looked miserable as he thought over things, this sallow little City man. Meanwhile John traded some monkey-nuts and sweet potatoes for salt, and sent the traffickers away. Afterwards Benson began to talk out of the bitterness of his soul, and John lit his pipe and listened gravely.
He's small in the world, but he'd better get out of the light, my boy, or he'll catch it!" Bosher subsides at this point, and the two friends resume their divided interest in the match, and old Wyndham, and the monkey-nuts. Presently two familiar forms saunter past, arm-in-arm. "There go Riddell and Bloomfield," says Parson. "Awfully chummy they've got, haven't they?
It is its best excuse for a yawning lack of plot. Delia Moore, lady mission-worker, roasted monkey-nuts for us. When they were at last ready, we all three munched at them. But meanwhile Richard Anson and I smoked Shangaan tobacco, and Miss Moore ate sweets out of a screw-topped bottle. Anson spoke about the charms of Mashonaland.
There was no village gossip, alas! about the passing of a white man that day! They were good to us, though, those villagers, and gave us beans and monkey-nuts for supper and mealies for our ponies. After we had finished eating we spread out the rush-mat they had lent us and lay down to smoke and meditate and surmise as to our passionate pilgrim.
I stood in contemplative admiration meditating, as I waited for my coolies, who sat moodily under a dilapidated roadside awning, nonchalantly picking out mouldy monkey-nuts from some coarse sweetmeat sold by a frowsy female. Then upwards we toiled in the dark, the weird groans of my exhausted men and the falling of the gravel beneath their sandalled feet alone breaking the hollow's gloom.
We outspanned in a very green valley, I remember, and sat long over roast monkey-nuts that his driver benignantly provided. 'The Lord put a word into my mouth, my friend said quite firmly and simply. 'Was there not the cause the cause of a child's career? Didn't our Savior speak plainly as to the ugly analogy of the man drowned like a dog with a stone round his neck in the deep of the sea?
"Boshy play, you know," says Telson, helping himself to monkey-nuts out of Parson's hospitable pocket; "but it's stunning to see the way old Wynd. gives middle. Any one else would take double the time over it." "Right you are! And he's awfully fair too. See the neat way he gave Forbes out leg before, just now!" "There's another two for Tedbury. We'll cheer him next time.
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