“Oh yes. We lived next door to each other down in the Colony, and so of course we saw a good deal of each other.” And then she coloured again, remembering how readily and naturally she had addressed this man by his supposed Christian name. What must he be thinking of her?
“I see,” he answered, tranquilly. “And so you took me for him. That isn’t so very strange either.”
Strange! Great Heavens! Even yet May was hardly quite sure the whole thing was not a make-believe. Strange? Why, even this man’s way of accepting the situation, passing over all detail, taking everything for granted, was Colvin’s way.
“Now that we have made each other’s acquaintance in this very unexpected manner, Miss Wenlock, perhaps you will allow me to see you, at any rate, a part of your way home. You might tell me a little about my relative. Where are you staying, by the way?”
“Just this side Doornfontein. Yes. I shall be delighted, if I am not taking you out of your way.”
“Who are you, kerel, and have you a permit to remain here?” interrupted, in Dutch, the peremptory voice of a Zarp.
Now “kerel”—meaning in this context “fellow”—is a pretty familiar, not to say impudent, form of address as proceeding from a common policeman. The tone, too, was open to objection on the same ground. But May, glancing at her new friend, noticed that he seemed in no wise ruffled thereby. He merely glanced at his interlocutor as though the latter had asked him for the time.
“I have applied for a permit and am awaiting it,” he answered, in the same language. “So, my good friend, don’t bother, but go and drink my health with your mates.”
The Zarp’s hand closed readily upon the image and superscription of Oom Paul, and Kenneth Kershaw and his companion passed out of the station.
“Oh, you are so like Col—er—your cousin,” was May’s comment on the above transaction. “That is exactly how he would have treated matters under the circumstances. Now, Frank would have wanted to go for the man at once, and then what a row there would have been! And I hate rows.”