Flippie and his grandmother did not belong to that degraded set, but the one was a thoughtless child and the other an exceedingly suspicious and inquisitive old woman, and that they were both used as unsuspecting tools by their more designing fellows I have not a shadow of doubt.
Mrs. van Warmelo and Hansie soon gave the old granny the name of "Um-Ah," for her tongue had been paralysed by a "stroke" twenty years back, and "Um-Ah," was all she was ever heard to say. It stood for yes and no and for every imaginable question, being only varied by the tone of voice in which it was said. Sometimes, when she became excited or impatient, it was fired off four or five times in quick succession.
This formidable old dame ruled Flippie with a rod of iron, appropriating the whole of his small salary every month and refusing to give him so much as a sixpence. When Mrs. van Warmelo found this out she stealthily added half a crown to his earnings for his own use, and this the generous lad regularly spent on sweets, cakes, and gingerbeer for his granny!
Even the chocolates and other good things to which kind-hearted soldiers treated him were laid as "trophies of the war" at his granny's feet, after he had vainly tried to induce Hansie to partake of them.
"Um-Ah" had an inconvenient way of dropping in at Harmony at all hours of the day, ostensibly to see if Flippie was doing his work well, but in reality to keep a watchful eye on the other inmates. She seemed to be always looking for something, and the time was soon to come when this unpleasant propensity should become a source of real danger to the van Warmelos.
Besides Flippie, there were two other permanent members on the domestic staff—a gigantic native named Paulus, and a young Zulu who went by the name of "Gentleman Jim" on account of his dandified appearance and the aristocratic "drawl" affected by him. American darkies say, "Dere's some folk dat is slow but shua, and some dar is dat's jes' slow!" Well, Gentleman Jim was "jes' slow." He was the only one on the premises who steadfastly refused to speak one word of Dutch, although he perfectly understood everything said to him.
The result was that the dialogues carried on between mistresses and servant were in Dutch on one side and in English on the other, it being one of the rules at Harmony to address all natives either in their own tongue or in Dutch, never in English.
I may say here that even at the present time it is customary with many Dutch South Africans to employ no English-speaking natives, but rather to engage the "raw" material, i.e. those speaking neither Dutch nor English, because they are, in nine cases out of ten, still unspoilt by civilisation and have lost none of the awe and respect with which they, in their native state, regard the white man.
Gentleman Jim was the only exception ever known at Harmony, and there was no lack of respect in his manner; on the contrary, the flourish with which he took off his hat and his slow and dignified, "Good morning, little missie," were well worth seeing and a constant source of amusement to all.