Well, it was a bull in a china-shop, as you might judge--and thank you kindly, Mr.Byng, with such a jolly laugh, and ever and ever and ever so grateful and so wonderfully--thoughtful, I think, was the word, as though one had planned it all.

And wouldn't I stay to breakfast?
And not a bit stagey or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond--a gem in her way, but not fine beur, not exactly.

A touch of the karoo, or the prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; and I'm glad I was in it last night with her.

I laughed a lot at breakfast--why yes, I stayed to breakfast.

Laugh before breakfast and cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it?
And I'm crying, all right, and there's weeping down on the Rand too." As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to him, so patently true and honest in every particular.