TWO DIANAS IN SOMALI LAND 17 



were not immediately starting, some of their kit having 

 gone astray. He was a noted shot, and Madam had 

 been some minor trip with him and meant to accom- 

 pany another. She was an intensely cross-grained 

 person, quite the last woman I should yearn to be 

 cooped up in a tent with for long at a time. Cecily's 

 idea of it was that the shikari husband meant, sooner 

 or later, to put into practice the words of that beautiful 

 song, "Why don't you take her out and lose her?" and 

 stuck to it that we should one day come on head-lines 

 in the Somaliland Daily Wail reading something like 

 this : 



GREAT SHIKARI IN TEARS. 



LOOKING FOR THE LOST ONE. 



SOME LIONS BOLT THEIR FOOD. 



The good lady regarded us with manifest disapproval. 

 She considered us as two lunatics, bound to meet with 

 disaster and misfortune. Being women alone, we were 

 foredoomed to failure and the most awful things. Our 

 caravan would murder or abandon us. That much was 

 certain. But she would not care to say which. Any- 

 way we should not accomplish anything. She pointed 

 out that a trip of the kind could not by any chance be 

 manoeuvred to a successful issue without the guidance 

 of a husband. A husband is an absolute necessity. 



I had to confess, shamefacedly enough, that we 

 had not got a husband, not even one husband, to say 

 nothing of one each, and husbands being so scarce 

 these days, and so hard to come by, we should really 

 have to try and manage without. Having by some 

 means or other contrived to annex a husband for her- 



B 



