[a/]
Chapter Eight.
“You are in Love with her.”
Bright and clear and cold, the morning arose. There had been a touch of frost in the night, and the house, lying back in its enclosure of aloe fence, looked as though roofed with a sheeting of silver in the sparkle of the rising sun. The spreading veldt, too, in the flash of its dewy sheen, seemed to lend a deeper blue to the dazzling, unclouded vault above. The metallic clatter of milk-pails in the cattle-kraal hard by mingled with the deep-toned hum of Kaffir voices; a troop of young ostriches turned loose were darting to and fro, or waltzing, and playfully kicking at each other; and so still and clear was the air, that the whistling call of partridges down in an old mealie land nearly a mile away was plainly audible.
“Where’s West?” Bayfield was saying, as three out of the four men were standing by the gate, finishing their early coffee.
“Oh, he’s a lazy beggar,” answered Earle, putting down his cup on a stone. “He don’t like turning out much before breakfast-time.”
“I believe you’ll miss some of your fowls this morning, Earle,” said Blachland. “There was a cat or something after them last night. They were kicking up the devil’s own row outside our window. Percy wanted to try a shot at it, whatever it was, but I choked him off that lay because I thought it’d scare the house.”
“Might have been a two-legged cat,” rejoined Earle. “And it isn’t worthwhile shooting even a poor devil of a thieving nigger for the sake of a chicken or two.”
“Who are you wanting to shoot, Mr Earle?”
“Ah! Good morning, Mrs Fenham. Blachland was saying there was a cat or something after the fowls last night, and it was all he could do to keep West from blazing off a gun at it. I suggested it might have been a two-legged cat—ha—ha!”