TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 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, 44 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 
