Part 17

Griswold allowed him to go no farther.

"I know this much," he roared: "she was in love with the man who took those photographs, and that man was in love with her! And you're that man!"

"What if I am!" roared back Charles. "Men always have loved her; men always will--because she's a fine, big, wonderful woman! You can't see that, and you never will. You insulted her! Now I'll give you time to apologize for that, and then I'll order you out of this house! And if Miss Proctor is the sort of girl I think she is, she'll order you out of it, too!"

Both men swung toward Miss Proctor. Her eyes were now smiling excitedly. She first turned them upon Charles, blushing most becomingly.

"Miss Proctor," she said, "hopes she is the sort of girl Mr. Cochran thinks she is." She then turned upon the greatest catch in America. "You needn't wait, Chester," she said, "not even to apologize."

Chester Griswold, alone in his car, was driven back to New York. On the way he invented a story to explain why, at the eleventh hour, he had jilted Aline Proctor; but when his thoughts reverted to the young man he had seen working with his sleeves rolled up he decided it would be safer to let Miss Proctor tell of the broken engagement in her own way.

Charles would not consent to drive his fair guest back to New York until she had first honored him with her presence at luncheon. It was served for two, on his veranda, under the climbing honeysuckles. During the luncheon he told her all.

Miss Proctor, in the light of his five years of devotion, magnanimously forgave him.

"Such a pretty house!" she exclaimed as they drove away from it. "When Griswold selected it for our honeymoon he showed his first appreciation of what I really like."

"It is still at your service!" said Charles.

Miss Proctor's eyes smiled with a strange light, but she did not speak. It was a happy ride; but when Charles left her at the door of her apartment-house he regarded sadly and with regret the bundle of retrieved photographs that she carried away.

"What is it?" she asked kindly.

"I'm thinking of going back to those empty frames," said Charles, and blushed deeply. Miss Proctor blushed also. With delighted and guilty eyes she hastily scanned the photographs. Snatching one from the collection, she gave it to him and then ran up the steps.

In the light of the spring sunset the eyes of Charles devoured the photograph of which, at last, he was the rightful owner. On it was written: "As long as this rock lasts!"

As Charles walked to his car his expression was distinctly thoughtful.

THE MEN OF ZANZIBAR

When his hunting trip in Uganda was over, Hemingway shipped his specimens and weapons direct from Mombasa to New York, but he himself journeyed south over the few miles that stretched to Zanzibar.

On the outward trip the steamer had touched there, and the little he saw of the place had so charmed him that all the time he was on safari he promised himself he would not return home without revisiting it. On the morning he arrived he had called upon Harris, his consul, to inquire about the hotel; and that evening Harris had returned his call and introduced him at the club.

One of the men there asked Hemingway what brought him to Africa, and when he answered simply and truthfully that he had come to shoot big game, it was as though he had said something clever, and every one smiled. On the way back to the hotel, as they felt their way through the narrow slits in the wall that served as streets, he asked the consul why every one had smiled.

The consul laughed evasively.

"It's a local joke," he explained. "A lot of men come here for reasons best kept to themselves, and they all say what you said, that they've come to shoot big game. It's grown to be a polite way of telling a man it is none of his business."

"But I didn't mean it that way," protested Hemingway. "I really have been after big game for the last eight months."

In the tone one uses to quiet a drunken man or a child, the consul answered soothingly.

"Of course," he assented--"of course you have." But to show he was not hopelessly credulous, and to keep Hemingway from involving himself deeper, he hinted tactfully: "Maybe they noticed you came ashore with only one steamer trunk and no gun-cases."

"Oh, that's easily explained," laughed Hemingway. "My heavy luggage--"

The consul had reached his house and his "boy" was pounding upon it with his heavy staff.

"Please don't explain to me," he begged. "It's quite unnecessary. Down here we're so darned glad to see any white man that we don't ask anything of him except that he won't hurry away. We judge them as they behave themselves here; we don't care what they are at home or why they left it."

Hemingway was highly amused. To find that he, a respectable, sport-loving Hemingway of Massachusetts, should be mistaken for a gun-runner, slave-dealer, or escaping cashier greatly delighted him.