Barker, though doubtless back in Red Gap I should have found them
as loathsome as ever. My hump was due, I made no doubt, first, to my
precarious position in the wilderness, but more than that to my
anomalous social position, for it seemed to me now that I was neither
fish nor fowl. I was no longer a gentleman's man--the familiar
boundaries of that office had been swept away; on the other hand, I
was most emphatically not the gentleman I had set myself up to be, and
I was weary of the pretence. The friendliness of these uncouth
companions, then, proved doubly welcome, for with them I could conduct
myself in a natural manner, happily forgetting my former limitations
and my present quite fictitious dignities.
I even found myself talking to them of cricket as we rode, telling
them I had once hit an eight--fully run out it was and not an
overthrow--though I dare say it meant little to them. I also took
pains to describe to them the correct method of brewing tea, which
they promised thereafter to observe, though this I fear they did from
mere politeness.
Our way continued adventurously upward until mid-afternoon, when we
began an equally adventurous descent through a jungle of pine trees,
not a few of which would have done credit to one of our own parks,
though there were, of course, too many of them here to be at all
effective.
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