They chose to believe her, especially after hearing her haggling and bartering with some of the itinerant dealers who visited the farm from time to time.
"I don't know vy ve can't do pizness today! I got no profit in anyting. I just been here for a friend"—thus the dealer.
"Ah! I know who your friend is," Clive would jeer from the stoep. "You keep him under your own hat. But don't come here expecting to swop a beautiful mule that cost me 20 pounds for that skew-eyed crock that will go thin as a rake after three weeks on the sour veld, a 10 pound note thrown in, and taking me for a fool into the bargain. Your horse is worth 15 pounds, and not a bean more."
"I also must lif!"—the whine of the Jew.
"I don't see the necessity." Clive shamelessly plagiarized Wilde,
Plato, or the holy prophets when it suited her.
"Vot, you know! You can't do pizness with a womans!" The dealer would weep tears of blood, but Clive made the bargain.
A week slid past, and April barely noticed its passing. No word came from the outer world. It was not the custom to read newspapers at Ho-la-lé-la, and all letters were stuffed unopened into a drawer, in case they might be bills. Close friends were wise enough to communicate by telegram, or, better still, dump themselves in person upon the doorstep. The only reason that April had been expected and fetched was that a "home letter" had heralded the likely advent of Lady Diana, and given the date and hotel at which she would be staying. Home letters were never stuffed away unopened.
Late one afternoon, however, there was an unexpected announcement. The boch-ma-keer-ie bird began to cry in the orchard, and Clive said it was a surer sign of visitors than any that came from the telegraph office.
"Tomorrow is Sunday. We'll have visitors, sure as a gun," she prophesied.
April quailed. She could not bear the peaceful drifting to end, and wished for no reminder of that outer world where Bellew, the mail-boat for England, and the dreary task of breaking an old man's heart awaited her. Sometimes in spite of herself she was obliged to consider these things, and the considering threw shadows under her eyes and hollowed her cheeks. Sarle, too, though he was a dream by day, became very real at night when she should have been dreaming. She knew now that she could never escape from the memory of him, and the thought that he was suffering from her silence and defection tortured her. What must he think of her, slinking guiltily away without a word of explanation or farewell? Doubtless Kenna would set him right! "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," she thought bitterly. Better far and braver to have done the explaining and setting right herself, if only she could have found some way of releasing herself from the compact of silence made with Diana and Bellew.