A quarter of a mile brought the two men to the enclosure of a little Karoo homestead, nestling in a hollow in the veldt. The Tiger was leading his pony, and after he had tied it to the rail outside, they walked boldly up to the verandah. They were greeted by an excited dog, and a minute later the door was opened by a tall cadaverous-looking youth.
"What do you want?"
The Tiger answered in Dutch. The farmer had evidently seen him before, as he bridled angrily.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" came the answer. "You have come back again. Well, I am sorry we have no forage for you!"
"It is not forage I want. Where is your father? Here is an officer who must see the 'boss.'"
"I tell you the 'boss' is not here. But will not the officer come in. Good evening, mister, come in here. I will bring a light!"
The two men were shown into a sitting-room, and the youth disappeared. A moment later a slender girl of about seventeen whisked into the room with a lamp, put it on the table, and disappeared. But the light had shone upon her just long enough to show that she was very comely. The true Dutch type. Flaxen hair, straight forehead and nose, beautiful complexion, and faded blue eyes. The farm evidently belonged to people of some substance. The room, after the manner of the Dutch, was well furnished. Ponderously decorated with the same lack of proportion which is to be found in an English middle-class lodging-house. Harmonium and piano in opposite corners,—crude chromos and distorted prints upon the walls; artificial flowers, anæmic in colouring and glass-protected, on the shelves; unwieldy albums on the table; coarse crotchet drapings on the chairs; the Royal Family in startling pigments as an over-mantel. For the moment one might have fancied that it was Mrs Scroggins's best parlour in Woburn Square.
After considerable whispering in the passage, the mother of the family, supported by two grown daughters and three children with wide-opened eyes, marched into the room.
"Good evening," and there was a limp handshake all round.
The attitude and expression of the good dame was combative. She was stout, slovenly, and forty. And the first impression was that she had once been what her pretty daughter was now at seventeen. There is nothing of the beauty of dignified age in the Dutch woman past her prime.