BRAVE YOUNG HIGHLANDERS.
To the Editors of The Friend,—Sirs,—In your Saturday's issue an appreciation of the R.A.M.C. appears, in which the Morning Post correspondent speaks of their services as stretcher-bearers at Magersfontein with the Highland Brigade, whereas the R.A.M.C. has furnished no stretcher-bearers to the Highland Brigade, the whole of this dangerous work having been done by the Regimental bearers, and "A" Company Volunteer Ambulance (King William's Town), and as this company—consisting principally of mere striplings—has "faced the music" right through, and kept shoulder to shoulder with the veterans of the Highland Brigade, they surely should be credited with the work they have so gallantly performed.
Yours very truly,
Britisher.
CHAPTER XXIV
False Hearts around us
Where only the Women were frank—The art of the War Artist.
Miss Bloemfontein was not alone in disliking to recognise the presence of the British army. Her mother was not the only person who could not bear to see Englishmen marring the scenery of the pest-ridden little town. Even while the tricky among the people joined in singing "Soldiers of the Queen," one man in the crowd turned to a war correspondent and said, "You English are strutting about very proudly and confidently, and think you own the country, but when you go away from here you will be sniped at from every bush and spruit wherever you show yourself."
I took a little walk up past the English Cathedral one day and saw a woman seated upon her front stoep, sewing. "Good morning," said I, "do you speak English?" She rose and glared at me with scorn in her eyes. "No," said she, "but I hate the English."
A little girl ran out of a doorway a few houses farther along and called to me, "Mister, mister! Please wear the red, white and blue," and she pinned a knot of the British and American colours on my coat lapel.
"What sort of a lady is it who lives in that house?" I asked; "she says she hates the English."