TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
64 
Clarence came to see me often. His occupation was 
gone. Cecily did not leave me at all at first. I believe 
our good fellow wondered if we should ever require 
him to hunt again. He did not know the proverb, 
44 Once bitten, twice shy,” but you could see he felt it. 
One evening, when I was convalescent, Clarence 
brought one of the men to us with inquiries as to the 
best way to cure him. 
4 4 What is the matter ? ” was naturally the first 
question, as we were not the human Homoceas our 
men seemed to take us for. 
Our servant had been chewing — must have been — a 
piece of thorn, and a particularly spiky insidious bit 
had stuck itself well in the back of his throat, near the 
left tonsil. It would seem an easy enough thing to pull 
out, but it was the most difficult of operations. We 
could not make any very prolonged attempt at dis- 
lodgment because every time we tried to touch the 
bit of thorn the man either shut his mouth with a snap 
and bit us, or pretended he must be sick forthwith. It 
was very laughable, but a little worrying. We tried 
nippers, a vast pair, that filled the mouth to over- 
flowing and hid the offending thorn from sight. We 
tried blunt scissors, which Cecily said would not cut 
because they could not, and might be relied on to act 
the part of nippers. Of course they did cut, when they 
weren’t needed to, the roof of the patient’s mouth, 
and matters grew worse than ever. The light was 
wholly insufficient, and we could hardly see at all. 
The candle lamp never shone in the right direction, 
and we laughed so — the two Somalis were in such 
