“Is this true, Hans?”
“It is, Victor. We turn up our sleeves when we skin an eland, and we take off our coats and turn down our collars when we are too hot. The frauleins in the towns turn down their dresses far lower than we do, and their sleeves are turned up higher than we turn ours.”
“Cess, this is strange. And you saw all this, Hans?”
“I did, Victor, and much more.”
“What more did you see, Hans?”
“I will tell you. I saw a Roebargie officer come into a room where there were many of these frauleins. He had never seen one of them before, but looking at one, he asked a man near to take him to her. He went up, Victor, bent his head very slowly, then—I tell you truth—he seized the fraulein round the waist, and as some music played he ran round the room with her, twisting round and round like a wounded pouw.”
“That, I have heard, the folks do in the towns. The Hottentots, too, are fond of it, though they don’t run about in the same manner. But what do the men during the day? Is there much game about there?”
“This, Victor, is the strangest thing of all. The men pass all their lives in the stores or in the shops, or they just walk about the town, or go in parties to ride out and ride home again. There is no game at all there, or so little that no one goes after it.
“Then, Hans, I will tell you what it is. The Mensch have no means of proving themselves men by riding and shooting, or training their oxen and horses, or even spooring, as we have here. We can make a mark on a man, and we know him by his deeds. We know you, Hans; you are a safe man to stand near one when a wounded lion is preparing to make his spring. You can be trusted to stop an elephant in his charge, and you can tell at a glance a buffalo’s spoor from an ox’s. In the towns they can’t do this, and so they amuse themselves with these trifles. And do they not try to exceed each other in their clothes, Hans?”
“Yes, they do; and by this means they show how much money they have.”