Niger

A rv Somewhere in the following days he paid his
^i1 v/ first visit to the home of Anderson, that polite
and jovial practitioner, who received him much in
the old manner, without hero-worship. And here
was Ailie, tall almost as himself, handsome, amused,
but impressed, with dark eyes quieting their fun as
she looked at him. It was no longer the raw boy
who had sailed for Bencoolen, but a young man
with grave eyes very sincere in their admiration.
A change came on Ailie with Mungo’s visits
light-hearted Ailie whose father adored her, a born
flirt and pleasure-seeker. So she could still be,
laughing at Mungo, teasing him, but putting that
mood aside for a still deep gravity that had not
seemed in her nature. And soon, in the months
that followed, that starved side of Mungo responded.
Perhaps he never loved her at all as a woman should
be loved—as a lover. The mother-complex of Fowl-
shiels was too deep in him, body and mind, for that.
Perhaps it was the aura of Ailie in those months that
led him to look back with such a quiet glow of grati¬
tude on the African women he had encountered :—
c In all my wanderings and wretchedness, I
found them uniformly kind and compassionate ;
and I can truly say, as my predecessor Mr. Ledyard
has eloquently said before me :—To a woman I
never addressed myself in the language of decency
256