Over the white farm-buildings and tin-roofed kaffir huts a slumbrous peace was reigning, for it was the hour of noonday rest, and men and beasts alike lay placidly sleeping.
Clothing the shores of the great dam hard by—now shrunk to half its usual proportions—the feathery willows drooped motionless, as though in silent lamentation of its fallen estate; even the restless windmill had ceased from toiling, and save for an occasional dismal clonk, uttered seemingly in its dreams, slumbered with the rest.
Stretching away on all sides from the small oasis of trees, lucerne patches, and dam, forming Rosebank Farm, rolled a sea of yellow grass, from which stuck up, like islands, saw-like ridge and conical kopje, and beyond them could be seen a giant ring of brown, paper-like hills, their outline sharp-cut and rigid against a sky of hard vivid blue.
As he looked at the scene, a frown gathered on Richard's handsome face, and in impotent anger he shook his fist at the blandly-smiling heavens.
"Confound you!" he muttered, "why can't you hide your face and rain for once in a while? My lucerne's withering, the dam will give out in a fortnight, the beasts are dying in the fields. Gad, I came out here to get away from English mists and fogs, but I'd give something now to feel one of those same old yellow fogs in my throat again. England, London, shops, Club, Savoy—oh damn! I'll go in and sleep." Richard shook his smart person—for clad though he was in weatherbeaten garments, patched and stained, Selbourne possessed that indefinable air of "class," which ancient clothes but serve to emphasise—and walked slowly back to the house.
On the stoep the figure of a girl was standing, clad in a black-and-white homespun riding-skirt, a white drill jacket, and a large grey Terai hat. "Hullo, Stara," said Richard, seeing her; "now, what the blazes are you up to, not going out riding in this heat, surely? You'll get sunstroke to a moral, if you do. Hullo!" suddenly aware of something unusual in her appearance, "what have you done to yourself? Lord, you've got on a habit, what's up? Oh!" and Richard's mouth expanded into a grin; and he winked at his sister, whose face straightway became bright red.
"And why shouldn't I put on a skirt?" she answered with dignity. "I know I usually do not, but——."
"But now he's coming you do."
"Nothing of the sort, I put it on because it's cooler. Don't keep me, please. I'm going to meet the Cape cart, as you're too lazy. Where's Polly?"
"In bed and asleep, but I shouldn't worry if I were you. The boy ought to know his way by now. I'm afraid though, old girl, this pal of yours will have rather a dull time, nothing on earth to do but look at the sunset, and you, I suppose. What's the game, Stara, are you going to make a job of it at last? Tell your brother, my child."