“What is it, Tanta?”
“Where has the girl gone?”
“Who? Aletta?”
“Who? Aletta? What other girl has just gone out, I would like to know?” snapped Tant’ Plessis, bringing down her stick hard upon the floor. “Where has she gone?”
“Gone? Only to look at the garden after the rain,” answered poor Mrs De la Rey, somewhat guiltily.
“Now you are lying, Gertruida,” rapped out the old woman. “Ah, if I could only give you the strop again as I used to do when you were a child!” shaking her stick viciously. “You, a mother of a grown-up family, to lie like that. Really you are a case to bring before Mynheer and the Kerkraad (Church Council). You know perfectly well that that girl has gone out to flirt with the Englishman.”
“She has not, Tant’ Plessis. You have no right to say such things,” retorted Mrs De la Rey, stung to momentary wrath. “It is you who are saying what is not true about my child.”
“Stil, stil! So that is the result of all the strop I used to give you, Gertruida—to call your elders liars! You think I know no English. I do, although I would sooner die than speak the accursed tongue. I heard Aletta say she was going out to flirt with the Englishman.”
“She didn’t say ‘flirt,’ Tanta. She said ‘talk.’”
“Well, well! What is the difference, I would like to know? To go out like that—to go up to a man and talk with him all alone in a garden! So that is the result of sending her to learn English ways. English ways, indeed! No wonder the English were made, like the heathen of old, to fall before the rifles of the Patriots. They were. I have heard Mynheer say so, and if he doesn’t know, who does?”