Involuntarily he smiled, as he walked off to his duty. Carew had
been an edifying spectacle, as he had sacrificed himself upon the
altar of cleanliness. He had been neither deft, dignified nor
devout; and, in all truth, Alice Mellen would have found it hard to
recognize her finical patient in the dusty, unshaven man whose hair
bore unmistakable signs of having been pruned with a pair of pocket
scissors. Little of Carew's past month had been spent in the base
camp at Springfontein. With hundreds of other men, he had gone
galloping up and down the Free State on the slippery heels of De
Wet, now being shot at by prowling Boers, now engaged in a lively
skirmish from which he never made his exit totally unscathed, now
riding for weary, dusty miles upon a scent which ultimately proved
to be a false one. And, meanwhile, not a postbag came into camp
without a letter for Carew, bearing the mark of Johannesburg. It was
not altogether resultless that Carew's foot had been obstinately
slow in its healing.
To Weldon, a fixture in camp, fell the care of receiving Carew's
mail. At last, when one day the bag brought in two letters addressed
in the same dashing, angular handwriting, he forsook his principles
and made open comment.
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