Strickland had contrived to put together that sort of meal which he called
lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his business. I was
left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of the summer had broken
up and given place to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in the
heated air, but the rain fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and flung up a
blue mist where it splashed back again. The bamboos and the custard apples, the
poinsettias and the mango-trees in the garden stood still while the warm water
lashed through them, and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A
little before the light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in
the back veranda and heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself
because I was covered with the thing they called prickly heat. Tietjens came
out with me and put her head in my lap, and was very sorrowful, so I gave her
biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back veranda on account of
the little coolness I found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me.
I could smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not the
least desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the
twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and
told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see some one.
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