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been let for six months and heaven knows what we shall find. I have to engage a new girl, too, and that’s always a problem, as you’ll discover! But you must come and have dinner with us before you go on to Port Acland. I’m very anxious that we should keep in touch. Who knows, one of these days you may be glad to have a friend in Cape Town.”
    “I’m glad now. Aunt Kitty’s death left me quite alone.”
    “How perfect that Stuart should come into your life when he did.” Mrs. MacLellan’s head turned on the pillow, her eyes held compassion and encouragement. “He’s fond of you Lindsey. Don’t attempt to force him to love you till he’s ready. It’ll come in time.”
    So her disquiet, skilfully guarded from Stuart, had communicated itself to the kind little woman, and she had added two and two and got the inevitable result.
    Her head bent. “I want to believe it will,” she answered with subdued passion. “Some day I’d like to tell you how it all came about—but not now. I t’s too new.”
    The Perthshire Abbey anchored off Cape Town in the small hours, but it was not till dawn—a rather late, misty dawn—that the passengers lined the r ails to stare over the crowded town which straggled from sea level up the wooded hillsides, yet crouched low beneath the grey-green splendor of Table Mountain. Each had his private conception of the Tavern of the Seven Seas. To Lindsey, it was the hot, dusty port swept by sudden rains of Aunt Kitty’s letters, and to her the mountain was sinister in its beauty, for Aunt Kitty had only mentioned it in connection with climbing fatalities.
    But after breakfast, when the ship drew in to the docks, she was enthralled by the hordes of native porters, so ragged and gay and noisy, and the signs on the sheds in both English and Afrikaans. Men and women, straining to glimpse the people they had come to meet, stood below on the sun-drenched concrete—and most of the women were knitting!
    Lindsey pointed excitedly. “Look, Stuart. They’re making their winter woollies. How comical—in this hot sun.”
    “Knitting’s a craze here—among the natives as well. They walk along the street doing it. How d’you like the African sky?”
    “It’s marvellous, and so are the mountains. Isn’t there a railway up Table Mountain? May we go up, Stuart? Which is the famous Signal Hill? And whereabouts is the Cas tl e?”
    He laughed. “One thing at a time. We’ll do all we can this week ... if they ever let us off the boat. Here are the immigration officers coming aboard. I’ll go inside and get cleared before the rush. Go back to your cabin and I’ll pick you up there.”
    Another hour passed before Lindsey set foot on South African soil. She stood still and drew a deep breath.
    Stuart was pre-occupied. “An agent will push our stuff through the Customs and send it up to the hotel. We’ll go straight there first and then despatch a few telegrams. After that I must make a couple of other calls.”
    In the taxi Lindsey shivered. “I do feel odd.”
    He was instantly anxious. “Oh, dear. I hope you’re not going to be landsick. There, lean against me, but don’t close your eyes. That’s fatal.”
    “Landsick,” she echoed, feebly indignant. “I wasn’t even seasick.”
    “It doesn’t follow. Your tummy’s still swaying with the sea, but the rest of you isn’t . ”
    “Stuart, please!”
    “So sorry. I meant that remark as a diversion. We’ll soon be there now. A little gin and an hour on your back will put you right. You got too excited,” he reproved her. '“It’s bad to let your emotions run away with you.”
    There was an answer to that if Lindsey had been in a condition to think it up. She saw streets of shops and crowds of people, black and white and all the shades in between. Then the cab left the centre of the town and climbed.
    The hotel he had chosen was large but pleasant and quiet. Lindsey’s room overlooked a trim lawn, in the middle of which a young