‘So you really are—’
‘I am the one that was in grief and despair, and to whom an angel came and touched me on the shoulder and said, “God has heard your prayer.” That angel came in your form, and gave me the most beautiful and best horse in the country, when I would have given my all for the ugliest old moke to be had.’
‘Oh, Mr Joubert, is it really you then? I thought it was you the moment I saw you, but, as I said, the beard confused me. I am so glad to see you again. My father has long expected you, as he said you had promised to pay us a visit. But don’t call me an angel again; I am all flesh and blood, and prone to sin, and you will tempt me to become proud if you thus flatter me, and pride is sinful.’ And as she spoke the blood she spoke of flushed rosily in her face, as if to prove her assertion of being flesh and blood.
What need to say more. The thing was done. Each felt drawn to each. Each felt that each had met a kindred spirit, and each soon felt that each loved each other; and when Jankie came in half-an-hour later to tell his Nonnie that Master Willim’s black stallion had come back, he found the two talking and smiling as if they had known each other for years. When old Mijnheer Meyer came home, he gave Steve a princely welcome, and the old lady, in spite of her former distrust of him, soon learned to love him as a son; the more so as he had grown a beard since last she had seen him. She detested a man who shaved.
And when Master William came home, he gladly renewed his former friendship with Steve, while his younger brother rivalled him in his attentions to their guest.
Before Steve’s holiday was over, everything had been decided upon. They were to be married in a month’s time. The month was to enable Steve to give his employers a month’s notice to leave, as old Mijnheer Meyer had given him and his betrothed the Pretoria farm belonging to the family.
The wedding was over. Steve took his beautiful young bride for a trip to his old home in G——, to see his mother and sisters. His mother was greatly pleased that her son had taken such a good and beautiful young wife.
As Steve received, as the wedding portion of his wife, a farm, with house, furniture and everything complete, and as his wife, like all daughters of well-to-do farmers, possessed her own flock of sheep, her own little herd of cows and bullocks, besides horses, etc., Steve found himself a fairly well-to-do young farmer. He now felt himself in the position to indulge to his heart’s content in the pleasures of tree-planting, gardening, farming and bee-keeping, which had always been his special hobby.
With a good and beautiful wife, a well-stocked farm, and by selling the greater portion of his mining shares—a good capital to work his farm—Steve has every promise of a happy and prosperous life before him. What his future will be we cannot say. With his intense love of country, he is sure to go in for politics, and with the freedom he now enjoys as an independent farmer, he will have leisure enough to enter into the political arena. If the opportunity offers, he is sure to do something for his country yet, and the reader may yet hear of him again as a leader of his people. We shall bid him and the reader now good-bye.