They looked at one another inquiringly and slowly shook their heads.
Good reader, after more than ten years, when they talk about this period of their lives, they still look inquiringly at one another and slowly shake their heads.
Who could it have been? How did it come about?
When Hansie went out into the garden an hour or so later to gather roses for the table, Harmony was flooded with the exquisite morning sun, the birds were twittering and bickering among themselves, and Carlo sprang up to meet her, barking an affectionate "good morning," as he playfully capered round his mistress.
As she stooped down to pat him she glanced through her hair to the camp, where some of the men were bending over their camp-fires and others were rubbing down and feeding their horses.
Will you believe it? At the first sight of the girl every man dropped his work, stood up straight and stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment as if he had never seen her before. They even got together again in little groups of twos and threes and began talking rapidly to one another. Their amazement, their consternation was so obvious that Hansie found it difficult to pretend that she saw nothing unusual in their behaviour, and when she joined her mother at the breakfast-table and told her what a commotion her appearance had created, Mrs. van Warmelo said: "It is the same with me. Wherever I show myself under the verandahs or in the garden, I am met with stares that can only be described as thunderstruck."
"And that, after all the months they have spent within earshot of all that went on at Harmony! Why, mother, those men have never lifted their heads when we have passed them for a year and more, they had got so used to us, but now——!"
She went on more seriously:
"We can never be thankful enough that you found this out in time. The members of the Committee must be warned not to come to Harmony, but we must invite lots of other people. Let us give a few fruit parties and musical evenings for the young people, and above all, let us invite the Consuls and their families." Hansie was feeling hopeful, buoyed up by the unlooked-for privilege of having been put on her guard, but Mrs. van Warmelo was silent and depressed.