I somehow felt an unwillingness to meet her glance, so, lowering my eyes, appeared to be busy refilling my pipe. But what woman in the world, even including Kaffirland, will be put off if they have anything to say? Thus a moment after, Zenuta approaching placed her gourd upon the ground, then sitting down said plaintively, “You are thinking of your home far away, Galbrth. You are thinking of your wife.”
I could not, nor did I wish to deny it, so I said, “Yes, Zenuta, I am. It is very sad to be separated from all those whom I have loved, and who have loved me from childhood. Fancy how you would feel it.”
“I would go anywhere with you. I would leave all,” rejoined the girl earnestly, as she looked into my face.
“My dear Zenuta,” I said, taking her hand, “you must not speak thus for my sake. You do not know what our land is compared to yours—how different it is: you would be unhappy there.”
“Have you not told me,” she answered quickly, “that it is a better land—that its people know more; that they are kinder; that they are what you call civilised?”
“Yes, truly, they are all this; but, Zenuta, you would be a stranger among them—strange to their customs, strange to their language.”
“So were you when you came here,” she interrupted, “yet we were kind to you. You have become a hunter—almost one of us.”
I could not deny this, and warmly confessed that I had been most hospitably treated; “and yet,” I had it on my lips to say, “I am not happy, Zenuta, neither would you be were you in England;” but as I looked into the poor girl’s eager, earnest eyes, I had not the heart to make the speech, and she continued most touchingly—
“Besides, I should not be alone, Galbrth; you would still be kind to me would you not? And your wife, too, I would like her for your sake.”
I do not mind owning that tears dimmed my eyes as Zenuta spoke, and, with some emotion, I pressed her hand, saying—