No fear Jeekie split on Little Bonsa, oh! no fear at all," and still
shaking his head solemnly, for the second time he seized the cold mutton
and vanished from the room.
"A farrago of superstitious nonsense," thought Alan to himself when
he had gone. "But still there may be something to be made out of it.
Evidently there is lots of gold in this Asiki country, if only one can
persuade the people to deal."
Then weary of Jeekie and his tribal gods, Alan lit his pipe and sat a
while thinking of Barbara and all the events of that tumultuous
day. Notwithstanding his rebuff at the hands of Mr. Haswell and the
difficulties and dangers which threatened, he felt even then that it had
been a happy and a fortunate day. For had he not discovered that Barbara
loved him with all her heart and soul as he loved Barbara? And as this
was so, he did not care a--Little Bonsa about anything else. The future
must look to itself, sufficient to the day was the abiding joy thereof.
So he went to bed and for a while to sleep, but he did not sleep very
long, for presently he fell to dreaming, something about Big Bonsa and
Little Bonsa which sat, or rather floated on either side of his couch
and held an interminable conversation over him, while Jeekie and Sir
Robert Aylward, perched respectively at its head and its foot, like the
symbols of the good and evil genii on a Mahommedan tomb, acted as a kind
of insane chorus.
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