“Don’t you be too curious, old Sanna,” was the answer. “Perhaps soon—perhaps not so soon. Who knows?”
“A Missis is badly wanted here, ja, very badly. Look at all that,” with a sweep of a yellow hand towards the confused pile of books and papers which had encroached over the greater part of the table. “All that would be cleared away. His letters too. Why the Baas does not even take the trouble to open his letters. Look at them.”
The girl’s heart tightened. Well she knew why those envelopes remained unopened. Their contents but bore upon the difficulties of their recipient, but in no sense with a tendency to alleviate the same. She forebore to touch the untidy heap lest something he might want to find should be misplaced, but she got a duster, and dusted and straightened the pictures and other things upon the wall. One frame only there was no need for her to dust or straighten. It was the one which contained her own portrait: and realising this a very soft, sweet smile came over her face. At which psychological moment Wyvern re-entered.
“I notice this is the only thing you allow old Sanna to dust,” she said ingenuously. “How many times a week is she under orders to do it?”
“You shall pay for that,” he answered. “There. Now you have done so duly, you shall own that you knew perfectly well that nobody ever touches it but me.”
“Oh, goeije! it is as if there were really a Missis here at last.”
The interruption came from old Sanna, who at that moment entered, bringing in the dishes. Both laughed.
“See, old Sanna,” said Wyvern. “We are rather tired of that remark. So if you can’t invent a new one don’t make any.”
“Better to be tired of that than of the Missis,” chuckled the old woman, as she withdrew. It will be seen that she was rather a privileged person.
The evening slipped by all too soon for these two, as they sat out on the stoep, watching the suffusing glow that heralded the rising of the broad moon. In the stillness the voices of night, well-nigh as multifold as the voices of day, were scarcely hushed, and the shrill bay of a jackal away beyond the river, would seem but a distance of yards instead of miles. The weird hoot of some ghostly night bird too, would float ever and anon from the hillside; and the dogs lying around the house would start up and bark in deep-toned, angry chorus, as the harsh shout of sentinel baboons echoed forth from the darksome recesses of the kloofs behind the homestead: or perchance as they detected some other sound, too subtle for human ears.