262 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
though that the skin was much damaged. My arm 
was ripped up most ingeniously for quite three inches. 
Another rent in my poor coat to be mended ! How- 
ever, it might all have been much worse. It might 
have been my right arm. The wind was tempered to 
the shorn lamb. 
I rode back to camp, with a handkerchief twisted 
tightly round the wound, and Cecily stayed to guard 
the oryx from vultures, until I could send some one to 
take over, when she returned to me fired with medical 
ardour and primed with medical knowledge from our 
book. She pronounced the wound as of the variety 
to be stitched. Could I bear it being stitched ? I said 
certainly, if she could endure the horror of stitching 
it. So we prepared for action. I told my doctor I 
would not have the place washed because I was con- 
vinced that Somali water, even when filtered, was not 
calculated to cleanse, rather the reverse, and I did 
dread blood-poisoning. I sat outside the tent on a 
packing case, and Cecily put three most workman- 
like stitches into my arm. She was a brick, never 
flinching until it was done, when she let off bottled- 
up steam by crying about four tears, and I think 
four tears are allowable — I mean without showing 
any sort of cowardice or lack of courage — don’t you ? 
Rome was not built in a day, and Cecily had never even 
been hospital-nursing ; but then she is the most un- 
fashionable person in the wide world. 
I carried my arm in a sling as we marched next 
day. Cecily was very anxious to halt the caravan on 
my account, but this I would not allow. The wells 
