“They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp—­I forget which,” he began again presently, “with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body.  He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted.  These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome.  Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches.  It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain.”

“I think none the better of it for that.”

“Men must work though women may weep,” said Wedderburn with profound gravity.

“Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp!  Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine—­if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine—­and no one round you but horrible natives!  They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches—­and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training.  And just for people in England to have orchids!”

“I don’t suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing,” said Wedderburn.  “Anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had let it wither.  And it makes these things more interesting.”

“It makes them disgusting.  I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them.  And just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing!  I never thought of that before.  There!  I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner.”

“I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat.  I can see them just as well there.”

The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator.  He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time.  In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange.

Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life.  He was delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery.

“That is a bud,” he said, “and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets.”

“They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown,” said his housekeeper.  “I don’t like them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.  They look like fingers trying to get at you.  I can’t help my likes and dislikes.”

“I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think there are any orchids I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that.  It may be my fancy, of course.  You see they are a little flattened at the ends.”