Ch. 7: Rescue And Retire! - Page 2

the Soudan I resolved to seek without an hour's delay.

I reckoned without my hostess.

My mother at first demurred.

'You certainly don't look well, Basil. But why the Soudan?'

'A whim, a sick man's fancy. Perhaps because it is not so very remote from Old Calabar, the country of Philippa's own father. Mother, tell me, how do you like her?'

'She is the woman you love, and however shady her antecedents, however peculiar her style of conversation, she is, she must be, blameless. To say more, after so short an acquaintance, might savour of haste and exaggeration.'

A woman's logic!

'Then you will come to the Soudan with us to-morrow?'

'No, my child, further south than Spain I will not go, not this journey!'

Here Philippa entered.

'Well, what's the next news, old man?' she said.

'To Spain, to-morrow!'



'Rain, rain, Go to Spain,
Be sure you don't come back again.'

sang sweet Philippa, in childish high spirits.

I had rarely seen her thus!

Alas, Philippa's nursery charm against the rain proved worse than unavailing.

That afternoon, after several months of brave black frost, which had gripped the land in its stern clasp, the rain began to fall heavily.

The white veil of snow gradually withdrew.

All that night I dreamed of the white snow slowly vanishing from the white hat.

Next morning the snow had vanished, and the white hat must have been obvious to the wayfaring man though a fool.

Next morning, and the next, and the next, found me still in London.

Why?

My mother was shopping!

Oh, the awful torture of having a gay mother shopping the solemn hours away, when each instant drew her son nearer to the doom of an accessory after the fact!

My mother did not object to travel, but she did like to have her little comforts about her.

She occupied herself in purchasing--

A water-bed.

A boule, or hot-water bottle.

A portable stove.

A travelling kitchen-range.

A medicine chest.

A complete set of Ollendorff.

Ten thousand pots of Dundee marmalade. And such other articles as she deemed essential to her comfort and safety during the expedition. In vain I urged that our motto was Rescue and Retire, and that such elaborate preparations might prevent our retiring from our native shore, and therefore make rescue exceedingly problematical.

My Tory mother only answered by quoting the example of Lord Wolseley and the Nile Expedition.

'How long did they tarry among the pots--the marmalade pots?' said my mother. 'Did they start before every mess had its proper share of extra teaspoons in case of accident, and a double supply of patent respirators for the drummer-boys, and of snow-shoes for the