“What is it now, old vrouw?”
“The Baas Clifford wants to speak with you, Baas Jacob. Messengers have come to you from far away.”
“What messengers?” he asked.
“I know not,” answered Sally, fanning her fat face with a yellow pocket-handkerchief. “They are strange people to me, and thin with travelling, but they talk a kind of Zulu. The Baas wishes you to come.”
“Will you come also, Miss Clifford? No? Then forgive me if I leave you,” and lifting his hat he went.
“A strange man, Missee,” said old Sally, when he had vanished, walking very fast.
“Yes,” answered Benita, in an indifferent voice.
“A very strange man,” went on the old woman. “Too much in his kop,” and she tapped her forehead. “I tink it will burst one day; but if it does not burst, then he will be great. I tell you that before, now I tell it you again, for I tink his time come. Now I go cook dinner.”
Benita sat by the lake till the twilight fell, and the wild geese began to flight over her. Then she walked back to the house thinking no more of Heer Meyer, thinking only that she was weary of this place in which there was nothing to occupy her mind and distract it from its ever present sorrow.
At dinner, or rather supper, that night she noticed that both her father and his partner seemed to be suffering from suppressed excitement, of which she thought she could guess the cause.