“Only some tiresome Dutch people,” she said to herself, with a weary sigh. “I hope to goodness they won’t come here, that’s all.”
But her wish was doomed to non-fulfilment, for very soon the cart was seen to turn off the road that should have taken it by and to strike the branch track leading direct to the house. A flutter of feminine garments within it betokened the nature of the visit.
“May, where are you? May?” shouted Frank, in stentorian tones. “Oh, there you are. Here’s a whole crowd coming down into the drift. Looks like the De la Reys. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“I wish they’d be somewhere else in a minute, then,” muttered May to herself with a frown that quite transformed the pretty, winning face within the ample white kapje.
Frank’s surmise proved correct. The occupants of the cart were the three De la Rey girls and their brother Jan. As they drove up Mrs Wenlock came out in a flutter of excitement and welcome.
“How good of you to come over!” she said. “I am so glad to see you. We don’t get many visitors just now. Why, Aletta, I should hardly have known you. My, but you must have been away quite a long time. I suppose you have been having grand times down at the Cape. And how tall you have grown! Well, I always say it does a girl good to send her about among folks and to see a little of the world. Let’s see, I don’t think you and my May have ever met. She was not with us when we first came up.”
May, who had already been exchanging greetings with the other girls, now turned to this one.
“No, we haven’t,” she said. “How do you do, Miss De la Rey?” And as the two clasped hands each was mentally reading the other.
“What a figure!” thought May to herself. “How easily and with what unconscious grace she moves! I wish I had it instead of being fat and dumpy”—which she wasn’t—“and beautifully dressed, yet quite plainly. Well, she isn’t pretty, that’s one thing. Oh no, she isn’t in the least pretty.”
“So this is ‘the only English girl,’” Aletta was thinking. “She is pretty. Yes, mother was right, she is very, very pretty. Those blue eyes—like Table Bay when the sun shines on it at noon—I wish I had them. And the gold of her hair, and her beautiful colouring. I do believe old Tant’ Plessis must be right. Frank, too, has improved since I saw him. He has grown quite good-looking.”