“I think that would suit me first-rate. I have some capital laid by. Ernest and I made a little money out there.”
“No, I would not advise you to take a farm in that way; these are bad times. But I want a practical man to look after my land round here—salary £150. What do you say?”
“You are very kind; but I doubt if I can boss that coach; I don’t know anything of the work.”
“Oh, you will very soon learn; there is a capital bailiff; Stamp—you remember him—he will soon put you up to the ropes. So we will consider that settled.”
Thus it was that our friend Jeremy entered on a new walk in life, and one which suited him very well. In less than a year’s time he grew aggressively agricultural, and one never met him but what he had a handful of oats, or a mangel-wurzel in his coat-tail pocket, which he was ready to swear were samples of the finest oats, mangel-wurzel, or whatever the particular agricultural product might be that ever had been, or were ever likely to be, grown.
CHAPTER VI.
HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT
How did it all come about?
Let us try and discover. Dorothy and Ernest were together all day long. They only separated when Mazooku came to lead the latter off to bed. At breakfast-time he led him back again, and handed him over to Dorothy for the day. Not that our Zulu friend liked this; he did not like it at all. It was, he considered, his business to lead his master about, and not that of the “Rosebud,” who was, as he discovered, after all nothing but a girl connected with his master neither by birth nor marriage. And on this point there finally arose a difference of opinion between the Rosebud and Mazooku.
The latter was leading Ernest for his morning walk, when Dorothy, perceiving it, and being very jealous of what she considered her rights, sallied out and took his hand from the great Zulu’s. Then did Mazooku’s long-pent indignation break forth.
“O Rosebud, sweet and small Rosebud!” he commenced, addressing her in Zulu, of which, needless to say, she understood not one word, “why do you come and take my father’s hand out of my hand? Is not Mazimba my father blind, and am I not his dog, his old dog, to lead him in his blindness? Why do you take his bone from a dog?”