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Maurice, who had small taste for sport, had gone sketching with his sister at her urgent request; and as Elsie settled herself, with a book, on a slope of hot pine-needles, she was surprised and startled to see Kenneth Malcolm approaching her. "May I sit here for a little?" he asked. "I have hardly had two words with you since you came back from Chumba. I suppose you enjoyed it all tremendously?"
Prompted by Colonel Mayhew, the Chumba Rajah, a shy taciturn boy of sixteen, had despatched a formal invitation, hoping that the Residency party would honour him with their company at the Palace on the evening of their arrival from Dalhousie; though in truth he wished them anywhere else in the world; and Colonel Mayhew, who was by no means too old to enjoy a spasmodic daylight flirtation with a woman of Quita's intelligence, had devised the native menu mainly for her delectation.
And the good folk of Chumba, men, women, and children, were early astir on this June day, in whose fiery lap lay hid the luck of the State for the coming year.
He smiled, but did not answer at once; and suddenly she lifted her head, her face all animation. "Look here, I have a notion an inspired notion. Why should not you two get Colonel Mayhew's permission to go off on a week's shooting trip beyond Chumba. Ten days if you like. Theo would love it. You would come back to your writing like a giant refreshed.
He knew her peculiar dread of separation from those she loved, knew that throughout the sixteen mouths of her child's life she had never left him for more than a few hours except to go to Chumba, and then not without remonstrance. Yet she was leaving him now of her own free will, for an indefinite time, and in the full knowledge of the grim possibilities ahead.
For a full hour the exodus of man and beast went noisily forward. But Colonel Mayhew's departure was delayed by his desire to see the Chumba contingent well under weigh before leaving: and by the time he announced his readiness to start, the last remaining units of the Great Camp were out of sight, trotting briskly along the shadowed road that winds up through the forest to Bukrota Mall.
He was wondering whether Mrs Desmond's remark that she had persuaded Captain Lenox to go shooting beyond Chumba, instead of deserting Dalhousie for the interior, might not be accountable for this unusual burst of eloquence. "I had no notion that you went in for studying big questions of that kind," he remarked, with an amused air of interest. "Studying them! But no!
"You can leave me out of the reckoning now for Chumba and Kajiar," he said abruptly. "I'm in no mood for that sort of foolery. I'll stay here and grind at this book of mine instead. You must excuse me to Mrs Desmond; and tell her just as much of the truth as you think fit." But before he had finished speaking, Desmond was on his feet, decision in every line of him.
I am free, therefore, to go elsewhere, if my presence here is in the least degree . . . annoying to you." "Oh, but that would be a pity. You must have had a special reason for choosing Dalhousie." "Some friends of mine were coming up, and asked me to come too. But they will quite understand if I say I should prefer to go shooting beyond Chumba." "Don't say it, though, please.
Thus, he agreed to share in their arrangements for the June camp, at Kajiar, a natural glade hid in the heart of Kalatope Forest: and even accepted, without demur, Colonel Mayhew's proposal to preface the 'week' with a two days' house-party at the Chumba Residency; a picturesque house, whose garden of lawns, and roses, and English trees falls sheer to the eddying river below.
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