Page:Knaves of Diamonds.pdf/288

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269
BEAUTY IN CAMP

didn't know what to do, for she had spent nearly all her money in coming up country, expecting to find her brother all right, and hadn't anything like enough to take her back to Grahamstown. In two minutes she had enough offered her to have bought the coach and team, and didn't we feel good when she refused it all in the sweetest of ways, and said if we'd allow her she'd sooner stop in camp, and earn her passage back than accept charity, 'even from us,' as she put it.

"She said she could cook and sew and make things, and sing to us a bit of an evening, if we liked, and we could pay her what we thought right for her services, and she would trust to our honour as gentlemen to see her right through her difficulty. After that speech the man who dared to look at her except as he'd look at his own mother would have been buried in little pieces.

"Well, we tossed up who should give up