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“Oh! is it?” said Dorcas, turning very pink. “Well, I am sorry to say that just now it is absolutely necessary that I should be absent from you, since I have a tennis party this afternoon–the officers of the garrison are coming and about half a dozen girls–and I must go to arrange about the tea.”

“A tennis party! A tennis party to those godless officers and probably equally godless girls,” exclaimed her husband. “I am ashamed of you, Dorcas, you should be occupied with higher things.”

Then at last the worm turned.

“Do you know, Thomas,” she answered, springing up, “that I am inclined to be ashamed of you too, who I think should be occupied in keeping your temper. You have accepted some strange mission without consulting me, you have promised 1,000 pounds of my money without consulting me, and now you scold me because I have a few young people to play tennis and stop to supper. It is unchristian, it is uncharitable, it is–too bad!” and sitting down again she burst into tears.

The Rev. Thomas who by now was in a really regal rage, not knowing what to say or do, glared about him. By ill-luck his eye fell upon a box of cigarettes that stood upon the mantelpiece.

“What are those things doing here?” he asked. “I do not smoke, so they cannot be for me. Is our money–I beg pardon–your money which is so much needed in other directions to be wasted in providing such unnecessaries–for officers and–idle girls? Oh–bless it all,” and seizing the offending cigarettes he hurled them through the open window, a scattered shower of white tubes which some Kaffirs outside instantly proceeded to collect.

Then he rushed from the house, and Dorcas went to get ready for her party. But first she sent a servant to buy another box of cigarettes. It was her first act of rebellion against the iron rule of the Rev. Thomas Bull.

III

In the end, as may be guessed, Dorcas, who was a good and faithful little soul, accompanied her husband to the Sisa country. Tabitha went also, rejoicing, having learned that in this happy land there was no school. Dorcas found the journey awful, but really, had she but known it, it was most fortunate, indeed ideal. Her husband, who was a little anxious on the point, had made the best arrangements that were possible on such an expedition.

The wagon in which they trekked was good and comfortable, and although it was still the rainy season, fortune favoured them in the matter of weather, so that when they came to the formidable river, they were actually able to trek across it with the help of some oxen borrowed from a missionary in that neighbourhood, without having recourse to the dreaded rope-slung basket, or even to the punt.

Beyond the river they were met by some Christian Kaffirs of the Sisa tribe, who were sent by the Chief Kosa to guide them through the hundred miles or so of difficult country which still lay between them and their goal. These men were pleasant-spoken but rather depressed folk, clad in much-worn European clothes that somehow became them very ill. They gave a melancholy account of the spiritual condition of the Sisas, who since the death of their last pastor, they said, were relapsing rapidly into heathenism under the pernicious influence of Menzi, the witch-doctor. Therefore Kosa sent his greetings and prayed the new Teacher to hurry to their aid and put a stop to this state of things.

“Fear nothing,” said Thomas in a loud voice, speaking in Zulu, which by now he knew very well. “I will put a stop to it.”

Then they asked him his name. He replied that it was Thomas Bull, which after the native fashion, having found out what bull meant in English, they translated into a long appellation which, strictly rendered, meant Roaring-Leader-of-the-holy-Herd. When he found this out, Thomas flatly declined any such unchristian title, with the result that, anxious to oblige, they christened him “Tombool,” and as “Tombool” thenceforward he was known. (Dorcas objected to this name, but Tabitha remarked sagely that at any rate it was better than “Tomfool.”)