Read Online A Pride of Lions by Isobel Chace - Free Book Online Page A

tell him at once!”
    I wondered at the ecstatic look on her face. Perhaps it was only the yellow, faltering lights that gave her such an odd expression. Her very fair hair and her eyes were lit up with excitement.
    “Not me!” I said. “I’m off to have a shower before dinner.”
    “But you’ll tell him when you see him, won’t you? You will, won’t you, Clare?”
    I felt suddenly weary of the whole affair. “I’ll tell him,” I agreed. I shook a particularly insistent insect out of my hair and went running down the path towards my tent.
    I was unaccustomed to awakening to a grey dawn. It had rained all night long and was still dripping through the trees and off the thatched coverings to the tents. Perhaps it would rain all day? I thought with an unaccountable feeling of depression. I hated it to rain in the daytime. My clothes felt damp to my touch as I pulled them on and there was a grey haze hanging over the whole camp which the sun was unlikely to dispel before lunchtime.
    Hans Doffnang was already seated at the table when I went across to eat my breakfast. He smiled at me politely, half rising to his feet as I came in.
    “You were right about the road,” he said heavily. “I have been to look at it this morning. It will have to be re-made before we can use it further.”
    He looked about as gloomy as I felt.
    “Oh well, if it had to happen, it’s better right at the beginning than at some other, more important stage,” I answered with resignation.
    “It should never have happened at all!”
    I felt sorry for him. ‘You weren’t to know,” I consoled him. “Building projects inevitably get held up in the rains here.”
    “But not my projects!” he responded gently. “I should have been told of the dangers.”
    I gave him a quizzical look. “They probably didn’t think the short rains would amount to much,” I told him. “Often they don’t. Only the long rains failed this year and so the ground is drier than ever. The top soil falls away under the weight of the water all too easily when it is a little more than dust. Then too the water sluices down underneath it and it falls away in great chunks. We often have landslides during the rains.”
    “We’ve got one now,” he said gloomily.
    “Oh well,” I comforted him, “when the rain stops, we’ll go and have a look. I daresay we can think of something to give it a firm surface. A few culverts will probably do the trick.”
    He smiled at me a little more cheerfully. “How glad I am to have you here with me! You understand it all, my invaluable Miss deJong!”
    “I try to,” I said. “But the sooner you learn a few words of English the better!” I added bitterly.
    His bright blue eyes filled with laughter. “Why?” he asked.
    I blushed. “Because you need to say some things yourself—”
    “I am intrigued!” he teased me.
    “Yes,” I said, “I daresay. Well, I have work to do even if you haven’t!”
    I finished my breakfast in a hurry. The rain, dripping off the roof, had dug a trench in the dust around the boma where we were eating. I looked at it with acute displeasure, swinging my raincoat over my shoulders.
    “Where will I find you?” Mr. Doffnang called after me.
    “Down by the river,” I answered him. “I promised Katundi that I’d scrub the water filters for him.”
    The Dutchman grinned. “Mind the crocodiles!” he warned me.
    I made a face at him. “I will,” I assured him.
    Cleaning the filters was a daily task that was necessary to keep the camp going. The waters of the river were never very clean and so every drop that we drank, and most of the water that we had to use for other purposes, had to be purified and stored. The filters did this job economically and highly effectively. They were dropped into the water and sucked it up, cleaning it on the way before it dripped out of the length of tubes at the other end into the waiting tank. The dirt that the filters kept out clung to the outside of the