“Well, Musgrave, not much doing!” cried the latter, perching himself on the side of the table and relighting his pipe. “What’s this?” picking up the official letters. “‘With reference to your circular—um—um—asking for a return of—um—um—’ Those damn circulars! Every post we get about twenty of them. Return! They’ll soon want a return of the number of buttons each official wears on his shirt,”—signing the letters. “What’s this? Another complaint? ‘Pound rescue,—Willem Cornelia Gerhardus Van Wyk.’ One of the biggest liars that ever trod God’s earth. I’ve fined him over and over again for licking his niggers or trying to do them out of their pay or something; and you’ll see him in church on Sunday with a face as long as a fiddle; he’s one of the ‘elders,’ too. He’ll have to come in and swear this, though.”
“He said he couldn’t wait, sir, but he’ll be in the first thing to-morrow, before court time.”
“Oh, that’ll do just as well, as I wasn’t here, I say, Musgrave, old boy, we’ll shut up shop and go for a walk. Got your pipe with you? Try some of this tobacco. Yes, we may as well take it easy while we can; we shall have enough to do next week with the monthly returns.”
So away they started, leaving the little baked-mud town behind them; away over the open veldt, with its carpet of wax blossoms, lying beneath the slopes of the great hills which stood forth all green and gold in the afternoon sun.
“What do you think of the new doctor, Musgrave?” said the magistrate at last, as they were discussing things and people in general.
“Lambert? H’m! Well, strictly between ourselves—not much.”
“Not, eh? I thought he seemed a nice fellow.”
“I don’t want to prejudice anybody against him, far from it; but I’ve noticed that between two given people there often exists an antipathy at sight. Now, Lambert may be a decent fellow enough in the main; but between him and me that antipathy exists.”
He did not add that from unerring signs he had taken the measure of the subject under discussion, and that that measure was as mean as mean could be.
“You don’t take to Lambert, then?”