Dear Miss Bloemfontein,—If there is doubt about which young lady it is who has made us welcome here, there is none at all about the genuineness of your letter and yourself. Its sheets exhale the subtle perfume of the mimosa flower, its strong, free writing reveals the confidence, health, and high spirits of the graceful rider of the veldt! Thank God (and thank you also, my dear) there is no line or phrase of resistance to our suit in all your letter but has a tender phrasing or carries a compliment—so that we know you do not dislike us a tenth so much as you hate the thought of seeming light-of-love, of feeling that we have dared to pity you, of fancying we think you are to be won for the mere asking.
Sweetheart, that was a clumsy letter of ours if it ruffled your maidenly sensitiveness with such misapprehensions. Henry V. was not the only one, or the last, of us Englishmen who could war with men better than he could woo women. And as Katharine looked through young Hal's rough armour into his warm and loyal heart, so we ask you to do with us.
Well, well! so it was your cousin, Miss Uitlander, whose azure eyes and twining fingers sent me into my rhapsody of love, while you, the true Katharine, the real princess, have held back, hid in some leafy bower of your pretty capital. Ah, well, it was not her hand that took our heart captive. It was not her eyes that slew us. What we loved was the essence of your soul and spirit which breathed upon us from your park-like seat, from your trees and gardens, from the pretty, happy houses of your subjects. It was you we loved, dear neighbour, you whom we have admired through all your youth and never quarrelled with and never known to be at fault.
As I wrote on Saturday, we still stand aside and look upon your charms of peaceful domesticity, all garlanded for your bridegroom. Still, too, we see your selfish, scheming guardian of the past fleeing from the wreck and ruin into which he has plunged your people. And we see your sworn champions in similar flight, leaving you forlorn, deserted. It is eminently womanly of you to defend these faithless gallants rather than solicit pity for yourself. It is the true maidenhood in you which makes you retire to your bower until you have forced us to acknowledge your value and earn your love. If we misjudged you and fancied you had tripped out to put your hand in ours, it was only because we were so eager and so smitten. We like you better as you are, shy and modest, proud and pure.
That deft touch of your pen upon the quality of our music—it was—I mean to say we find no fault in you for—but, no, we may not be disloyal, even to our pipes. It was the best we had to offer, and when better comes from home we fancy that even you will cease to barricade your pearly ears against it. We shall enjoy hearing Pan set your sighs to melody. We promise not to drive him away; he shall ever play your songs just as he trills the lays of ever so many fair maidens who throng around our Queen, and who remember the chains she has stricken from their limbs without for an instant forgetting the traditions which still knit each to her past and her kindred in so many far lands.
You speak of the "great honour" of our liking you. You extol our bravery. You admit our "tender mercies" and our love of order. You say you will not forget our courtesy to your people or our modesty. You call us "the politest of polite men"—ah, dear little Afrikander, we treasure each word in each of those sentences. We cannot help taking heart of hope. If you can speak of us so fair to-day, when the whispers of your old lover still sound in your ears, what may we not expect in time to come? We will not try to hurry your heart, but we warn you we shall melt it. For we love you, and there is no selfish prompting, no hope of mercenary gain in our affection. We love you because you are irresistible, even with your dimpled little hand clenched, and, perhaps, partly because of the lightning that flashes in your pretty eyes.
Julian Ralph.
JOINING HANDS WITH GATACRE AND CLEMENTS.
On Thursday morning last a small force was despatched by train from Bloemfontein to the South, in order to open up the country, to find out the dispositions of the enemy between here and the Orange River, and, if possible, to join hands with the British forces now operating in the direction of Stormberg and Colesberg.