“So much the better for you and me, Miss Bessie. We can have a pleasant talk. Where is that black monkey Jantje? Here, Jantje, take my horse, you ugly devil, and mind you look after him, or I’ll cut the liver out of you!”
Jantje took the horse, with a forced grin of appreciation at the joke, and led him off to the stable.
“I don’t think that Jantje likes you, Meinheer Muller,” said Bessie, spitefully, “and I do not wonder at it if you talk to him like that. He told me the other day that he had known you for twenty years,” and she looked at him inquiringly.
This casual remark produced a strange effect on her visitor, who turned colour beneath his tanned skin.
“He lies, the black hound,” he said, “and I’ll put a bullet through him if he says it again! What should I know about him, or he about me? Can I keep count of every miserable man-monkey I meet?” and he muttered a string of Dutch oaths into his long beard.
“Really, Meinheer!” said Bessie.
“Why do you always call me ‘Meinheer’?” he asked, turning so fiercely on her that she started back a step. “I tell you I am not a Boer. I am an Englishman. My mother was English; and besides, thanks to Lord Carnarvon, we are all English now.”
“I don’t see why you should mind being thought a Boer,” she said coolly: “there are some very good people among the Boers, and besides, you used to be a great ‘patriot.’”
“Used to be—yes; and so the trees used to bend to the north when the wind blew that way, but now they bend to the south, for the wind has turned. By-and-by it may set to the north again—that is another matter—then we shall see.”
Bessie made no answer beyond pursing up her pretty mouth and slowly picking a leaf from the vine that trailed overhead.