SCENE TWO.
The open veldt. Row of kopjes in the middle distance. Enter cavalry patrol with Reginald Talbot Vere-Crœsus at their head. (Band playing, "Let 'em all come.")
First Soldier: I thought I heard a rifle shot.
Reginald Talbot de V.-C.: Nay. 'Twas but a soldier being shot for stealing a bar of soap from an enemy's cottage. Serve the miscreant right. Take open order, there. Walk, march!
They ride round the stage with one eye on the kopjes and the other admiring the fit of their breeches. Rifle shots are heard from the kopjes. Band changes to, "You never know your Luck!" Heavy rattle of musketry from kopjes. Patrol driven back and retire to pom-pom accompaniment from the big drum. R. T. de V.-C. falls prone from his charger. Katinka rushes in (r.u.e.) weeping hysterically and throws herself on his body.
Enter Jacobus Johannes van der Mauser (l.e.), and leans on his rifle, staring gloomily at the scene.
Jacobus: Ha! ha! So it has come to this! She secretly loves the young English officer who reconnoitres kopjes with an eye-glass! (Sticks his chin out, claws the air and ambles about the stage à la Henry Irving.) But I will be revenged! Ha! ha! I have it! I will go and join the Johannesburg police! False woman, what sayest thou?
Katinka (hysterically): I am innocent, Johannes. I am innocent! (Coils herself round the body of R. T. de V.-C. à la Sarah Bernhardt.)
Jacobus: Innocent! Then why weepest thou?
Katinka (rising suddenly): Weep! I should think I would weep. Didn't he owe us three pound seventeen and sixpence for milk! How am I to make the dairy pay if you persist in shooting my best customers?