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38 “The first time! What about Atia-muri?” interrupted Mrs Greendays tragically.

“Well, nearly the first time,” amended her husband patiently. “I really don’t think we can complain when we have an occasional reminder that this country is new, very new, and”

His voice died away as he followed his wife on her way to the landing stage, and Colonel Deane and I laughed involuntarily as our eyes met. It was about six o’clock in the morning; we had arrived at dusk the evening before to find it raining pitilessly and the only place in the shape of an inn a very wretched, third-rate boarding-house with not an apartment in the house bigger than a ship’s cabin, excepting a bare and dreary dining-room. But all the rooms were arranged for two, and though we had wired for ours days before I should have had to share mine with some stranger if Mrs Greendays had not taken me in with her, while her husband and Colonel Deane, to avoid unknown room-mates, had shared another. When we asked for baths we were curtly told to go to the river if we wanted such luxuries, and in every way the proprietors seemed bent on proving their independence by being as offensive as possible. In the night the rain came down in torrents, it became very cold, and this morning the weather was worse instead of better than it had been, greatly to our dismay. So in spite of the uncomfortable lodging Captain Greendays had suggested waiting two days for the next boat in the hope of its improving, but Mrs Greendays had very promptly pooh-poohed the idea.

And therefore we were now picking our way through the muddy track and over a swampy strip of meadowland, to the launch.

“The old chap is quite right,” said Colonel Deane. “And especially in this case, as it is only a few months since the railway was opened as far as this. People who wanted to avoid the sea-trip to Auckland from Wellington used to come up the river only as far as Pipiriki, then drive from there to Rotorua via Taupo, and then of course there was no need for hotels in this out-of-the-way place.”

“It does not take very many months to build an hotel!” I retorted.

“And one will be open in a few weeks!” he returned. “You must not be unreasonable. I think that considering the rush that woman had last night,—half the people had never given her notice of their coming—she did it uncommonly well. We each had a bed and a good meal, and what more can travellers in the wilds expect? And Taumarunui has been very much in the wilds until just lately.”

“One is surely justified in expecting ordinary civility,” I said. “But don’t let us talk about the wretched place any more. Is it really always raining here?”

“Pretty often, I think. It is so surrounded by hill and forest, you see. But I have an idea that it is going to clear up before long.”