In the midst of a strangely non-real existence, unconnected with past or future, the moments that I spent in doctoring Wawerru were sweet to me, like a breeze on a parched plain. The French Fathers had presented me with a new kind of ointment for burns, just out from France. Wawerru was a slight, slant-eyed child, late-born in his family and spoilt, in so far as he believed that nobody would do him anything but good. He or his elder brothers who carried him up to the house had managed to grasp the idea of a treatment every third day, and his sores were yielding to my cure. Kamante as my amanuensis was aware of the happiness that the task gave me, his lynx eyes every third day would seek out the small group amongst the patients on the terrace, and one time, when they had missed a day, he gave himself the trouble to walk down to Wawerru’s manyatta and to admonish his family about their duties. Then suddenly Wawerru did not appear, he vanished out of my existence. I questioned another toto about him; ‘Sejui’ – I know not – he answered. A few days later I rode down to the manyatta, my dogs running with me.

The manyatta lay at the foot of a long, green grass-slope. It contained a large number of huts, for Wawerru’s father had got several wives, with a hut to each of them and – in the way of most wealthy Kikuyu – a central hut of his own, into which he could retire from the world of femininity to meditate in peace, and there was also an irregular suburb of bigger and smaller granaries to the settlement.

As I rode down the slope, I saw Wawerru himself sitting on the grass, playing with a couple of other totos. One of his playfellows caught sight of me and notified him, and he at once, without so much as a glance in my direction, set off into the maze of the huts and disappeared to my eyes. His legs were still too weak to carry him, he scuttled along with wondrous quickness on all fours like a mouse. I quite suddenly was thrown into a state of flaming anger at the sight of such ingratitude. I set Rouge into a canter to catch up with him, and at the moment when, in the exact way of a mouse with its hole, he slipped into a hut, I jumped from the saddle and followed him. Rouge was a wise horse; if I left him, the reins loose round his neck, he would stand still and wait for me till I came back. I had my riding whip in my hand.