I'll promise you that, before I
begin, and you needn't get scared either, because it's all good.
I've been awfully lucky, and all because that fellow Cathcart
turned out such a funk and a bounder. It's the oddest thing in
the world too, that old Cis should have written me to pick up all
the news I could about Scarlett Trent and send it to you. Why,
he's within a few feet of me at this moment, and I've been seeing
him continually ever since I came here. But there, I'll try and
begin at the beginning.
"You know Cathcart got the post of Consulting Surveyor and Engineer
to the Bekwando Syndicate, and he was head man at our London place.
Well, they sent me from Capetown to be junior to him, and a jolly
good move for me too. I never did see anything in Cathcart! He's
a lazy sort of chap, hates work, and I guess he only got the job
because his uncle had got a lot of shares in the business. It seems
he never wanted to come, hates any place except London, which
accounts for a good deal.
"All the time when we were waiting, he wasn't a bit keen and kept
on rotting about the good times he might have been having in London,
and what a fearful country we were stranded in, till he almost gave
me the blues, and if there hadn't been some jolly good shooting and
a few nice chaps up at the Fort, I should have been miserable.
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