"Didn't I say walkin' 'ud be only just my luck ?" So we walked, and reached Nairobi a long way ahead of Coutlass and his gang, whose shoes, among other matters, pinched them; and we were comfortably quartered in the one hotel several hours before the arrival of Lady Saffren Waldon and those folk who elected to wait for the breakdown gang and the relief train.
It was a tired hotel, conducted by a tired once-missionary person, just as Nairobi itself was a tired-looking township of small parallel roofs of unpainted corrugated iron, with one main street more than a mile long and perhaps a dozen side-streets varying in length from fifty feet to half a mile.
He must have been a very tired surveyor who pitched on that site and marked it as railway headquarters on his map.

He could have gone on and found within five miles two or three sightlier, healthier spots.
But doubtless the day's march had been a long one, and perhaps he had fever, and was cross.

At any rate, there stood Nairobi, with its "tin-town" for the railway underlings, its "tin" sheds for the repair shops, its big "tin" station buildings, and its string of pleasant-looking bungalows on the only high ground, where the government nabobs lived.
The hotel was in the middle of the main street, a square frame building with a veranda in front and its laundry hanging out behind.

Nairobi being a young place, with all Africa in which to spread, town plots were large, and as a matter of fact the sensation in our corner room was of being in a wilderness--until we considered the board partition.
Having marched fastest we obtained the best room and the only bath, but next-door neighbors could hear our conversation as easily as if there had been no division at all.

However, as it happened, neither Coutlass and his gang nor Lady Saffren Waldon and her maid were put next to us on either side.