Kenneth Kershaw turned away, and as he strolled along his thoughts were busy.
“By Jove, that is a pretty little girl,” he was saying to himself. “Not quite up to the mark in other ways perhaps, but pretty enough even to make up for that,” with a recollection of the bright smile, and the look in the sea-blue eyes, which had accompanied the farewell handclasp. “And Colvin? She let go a lot about him. Likely to turn up here, is he? Reputed to stand in too much with the Boers! Suspicion of entanglement with a Boer girl— She shut up like an oyster when she came to that part, though. Well, well. This day’s work may turn out not bad. Colvin on this side, the two peas likeness between us, that dear little girl in there whom I can simply twist round my finger, and turn to any account, and the war! Strange if my luck doesn’t take a sudden turn in the right direction. Colvin, the only obstacle, worth reckoning on, that is. Obstacles have to be removed sometimes. Yes, his luck has run too long. Hurrah for the war?”
Note 1. From the letters Z.A.R.P. (Zuid Afrikaansche Republieke Politie—South African Republic’s Police). The joke has passed into a recognised popular term.
[a/]
Chapter Two.
A Transvaal Official.
Petrus Johannes Stephanus Gerhardus Du Plessis, commonly known to his kinsfolk and acquaintance and to the crowd at large as Piet Plessis, was a high official in not the least important department of the Transvaal Civil Service.
Born in the Free State, and educated—well educated—in Holland, he combined the slim qualities of the Boer with the shrewd, technical, worldly-wisdom of the Hollander. He was now of middle age and somewhat portly of person, and withal a jolly, genial Dutchman, whose ringing laugh and jovial manner conveyed the idea of open-hearted frankness to the last degree. Those who ran away with that impression had their education in character-studying to complete. For all his apparent open-heartedness, Piet Plessis was never known by word or wink to “give away” anything. And he could have given away some “things” of a very strange and startling nature had he so chosen.