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The girl turned an agonised face to Flory as he appeared. ‘Oh, do be quick!’ she cried, in the angry,
urgent tone of people who are frightened. ‘Please! Help me! Help me!’
Flory was too astonished to ask any questions. He hastened towards her, and, in default of a stick,
smacked the buffalo sharply on the nose. With a timid, loutish movement the great beast turned aside,
then lumbered off followed by the calf. The other buffalo also extricated itself from the slime and
lolloped away. The girl threw herself against Flory, almost into his arms, quite overcome by her
fright.
‘Oh, thank you, thank you! Oh, those dreadful things! What are they? I thought they were going to
kill me. What horrible creatures! What are they?’
‘They’re only water-buffaloes. They come from the village up there.’
‘Buffaloes?’
‘Not wild buffaloes–bison, we call those. They’re just a kind of cattle the Burmans keep. I say,
they’ve given you a nasty shock. I‘m sorry.’
She was still clinging closely to his arm, and he could feel her shaking. He looked down, but he
could not see her face, only the top of her head, hatless, with yellow hair as short as a boy’s. And he
could see one of the hands on his arm. It was long, slender, youthful, with the motded wrist of a
schoolgirl. It was several years since he had seen such a hand. He became conscious of the soft,
youthful body pressed against his own, and the warmth breathing out of it; whereat something seemed
to thaw and grow warm within him.
‘It’s all right, they’re gone,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of.’
The girl was recovering from her fright, and she stood a little away from him, with one hand still
on his arm. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing. I’m not hurt. They didn’t touch me. It was only their
looking so awful.’
‘They’re quite harmless really. Their horns are set so far back that they can’t gore you. They’re
very stupid brutes. They only pretend to show fight when they’ve got calves.’
They had stood apart now, and a slight embarrassment came over them both immediately. Flory had
already turned himself sidelong to keep his birthmarked cheek away from her. He said:
‘I say, this is a queer sort of introduction! I haven’t asked yet how you got here. Wherever did you
come from–if it’s not rude to ask?’
‘I just came out of my uncle’s garden. It seemed such a nice morning, I thought I’d go for a walk.
And then those dreadful things came after me. I’m quite new to this country, you see.’
‘Your uncle? Oh, of course! You’re Mr Lackersteen’s niece. We heard you were coming. I say,
shall we get out on to the maidan? There’ll be a path somewhere. What a start for your first morning
in Kyauktada! This’ll give you rather a bad impression of Burma, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh no; only it’s all rather strange. How thick these bushes grow! All kind of twisted together and
foreign looking. You could get lost here in a moment. Is this what they call jungle?’
‘Scrub jungle. Burma’s mostly jungle–a green, unpleasant land, I call it. I wouldn’t walk through
that grass if I were you. The seeds get into your stockings and work their way into your skin.’
He let the girl walk ahead of him, feeling easier when she could not see his face. She was tallish
for a girl, slender, and wearing a lilac-coloured cotton frock. From the way she moved her limbs he