Elvesdon looked puzzled.
“Do you mean on to the roof, Miss Thornhill?” he said.
The girl went off into another merry peal; the point of the joke being that the farm was so named, after a certain striking mountain which stood opposite, but this their visitor did not know.
“I don’t believe you meant that seriously,” she said.
“But I did. Why not?”
“When you come to know your own district a little better, Mr Elvesdon,” she pronounced with mock severity, “you will know that that flat topped mountain over there beyond the kloof—the one with that splendid red krantz at the top—is called Sipazi-pazi, on account of the glimmer which seems to set it on fire when the sun gets on to it at a certain angle.”
“Good name that,” he answered, looking at the stately pile with renewed interest. “But then, unfortunately, I have only just come into my ‘own district’ and haven’t quite had time to ‘know’ everything.”
“Well then, this place is named after the mountain,” she went on, loftily ignoring the retort. “But the doubled word is too much of a mouthful, so we cut it down, and call both just Sipazi. In fact so do the natives themselves.”
“I shall be delighted to make the acquaintance of its summit. When shall we start?”
“Oh, not yet. When it’s cooler. It doesn’t take long to go up, and the sunsets from there are simply indescribable.”