Flower o' the Peach. Gibbon Perceval

them. He sank his finger-tops in the soft plasticity of the stuff, and smiled across it at the others, at the boy, embarrassed and not sure of Margaret yet, and at her, still mastered by her curiosity. It was almost as if he were used to being regarded with astonishment, and his self-possession had a touch of that deliberate lime-lit quality which distinguishes the private lives of preachers and actors and hunchbacks.

      For the rest, he seemed to be about Margaret's age, clean run and of the middle stature. Watching him, Margaret was at a loss to discover what it was about him that seemed so oddly commonplace and familiar till she noted his clothes. They were "tweeds." Though he had apparently slept on the bare ground in them and made them a buffer between his skin and many emergencies of travel, they were still tweeds, such as any sprightly youth of Bayswater might affect for a week-end in the country.

      It needed only a complexion and an attitude to render him inconspicuous on a golf-course, but in that place, under the majestic sun, with the heat-dazzle of the Karoo at his back, his very clothes made him the more incomprehensible.

      Margaret realized that he was waiting for her to speak.

      "You model, then?" she asked, striving to speak in an altogether matter-of-fact tone, as though to come across gifted, English-speaking negroes, giving art lessons in odd corners, were nothing unusual.

      "Just a little," he answered. "Enough to help Paul to make a beginning. Eh, Paul?"

      Paul nodded, turning to Margaret. "He knows lots," he said. "He 's been in London, too. It was there he learned to – to model."

      Paul had a way of uttering the word "London" which conveyed to Margaret's ready sympathies some little part of what it meant to him, the bright unattainable home of wonderful activities, the land of heart's desire.

      "In London?" She turned to the Kafir, "London seems a long way from here, doesn't it?"

      "Yes; a long way." He was not smiling now. "It is seven months since I left London," he said; "and already it seems dim and unreal. It's as if I 'd dreamed about it and only remembered parts of my dream."

      Paul was listening with that profound attention he seemed to give to all things.

      "I don't feel it 's as far as all that," said Margaret. "But then, I was there two months ago. Probably that makes a difference."

      She was only now beginning to realize the strangeness of the encounter, and as she talked her faculties, taken by ambush and startled from their functions, regained their alertness. She watched him composedly as he replied.

      "Yes," he said. "And there are other differences, too. Since I left London I have not slept under a roof."

      While he spoke he did not cease to finger the clay; as he turned it here and there, Margaret was able to see it was the head of a negro that he was shaping and the work was already well forward. It was, indeed, the same head whose unexpected scowl had astonished Paul; and as he moved it about, the still gloomy face of clay seemed to glance backward and forward as though it heard him and doubted.

      "But why not?" demanded Margaret.

      He seemed to hesitate before answering, and meanwhile his hands were busy and deft.

      "Why not?" she repeated. "Seven months! I don't understand. Why have n't you slept under a roof all that time?"

      "Well!" He smiled as he spoke at last. "You see – I don't speak Kafir. That's where the trouble is. When first I came up here, I went across to the southern districts, where Kafirs are pretty numerous. My idea was to live among them, in order to – well, to carry out an idea of mine."

      He paused. "They didn't know what to make of you?" suggested Margaret.

      "No – unless it was a corpse," he answered. "I don't really blame them; they must have been horribly suspicious of me. At the first kraal I came to – the first village, that is – I tried to make myself known to a splendid old chap, sitting over a little fire, who seemed to be in charge. That was awfully queer. Every man, woman and child in the place stood round and stared and made noises of distrust – that's what they sounded like; and the old chap just squatted in the middle and blinked up at me without a word. I 'd heard that most of the Kafirs about here could understand a little English, so I just talked away and tried to look innocent and useful and I hoped I was making the right impression. The chap listened profoundly till I had quite done, looking as though he were taking in every word of it. Then he lifted both arms, with exactly the movement of a cock when it 's going to crow, and two young fellows behind him leaned down and took hold of them and helped him very slowly to his feet. I made sure I 'd done the trick and that he was getting up to shake hands or something. But instead of that he groped about with his right hand in a blind, helpless kind of way, till one of his private secretaries put a knobherry, a bludgeon with a knob on the end, into it. And then, the poor old thing who had to be helped to his feet took one quick step in my direction and landed me a bang on the head with the club. I just remember that all the others burst into screams of laughter; I must have heard them as I went down."

      "What a horrible thing!" exclaimed Margaret.

      He smiled again, his teeth flashing brilliantly in his black face.

      "It was awkward at the time," he admitted. "I came to later on the veld where they dragged me, with a lump on my head the size of my fist. And sore – by Jove! I was sore. Still, it's just possible I might have gone back for another try, if the first thing I saw hadn't been a tall black gentleman sitting at the entrance to the kraal with an assegai – a spear, that is – ready for me. I concluded it was n't good enough!"