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Macray answered with a chuckle. "Top teeth gone—gorilla knocked 'em out with a club in the night."

This was a jest—like Macray's jests in general: cheery, merrily meant: but pointless, clownish.

"Is it a question of teeth?" Cobby said: "yes, that is it. So what has really happened?"

"Only this—for seven years, off and on, I've been trying to wear false teeth, and last night I chucked them for ever off me into the bush. Bravo! the eaters will be eaten by an ostrich. Now I can dine with my gums and defy the world. That was what made my mouth sore, baas."

"I see. Why didn't you ever mention it?"

"Oh, he was shy before the ladies," Rolls flung off from over a bowl of meal and "amasi"-curds, which he was earnestly eating.

"Still, the teeth did rather heighten your beauty," Cobby remarked to Macray: "and as you look now I seem to remember seeing you in some dream—somewhere—where was it?"

Macray chuckled. "You remember, inkoos, the night you caught your sister under the oak with a man? I was that man."