"Which shall it be, children? The 'Story of the Shining Princess' or 'Nya-Nya Bulembu,' 'The Fairy Frog,' or 'The Beauty and the Beast'?" asked Mabiliana, very gracefully taking a pinch of snuff from time to time.
"The Beauty and the Beast!" shouted all the little blacks with one voice. That story is a great favorite with Kafir children.
"Then 'The Beauty and the Beast' it shall be," sweetly assented the young Kafiress.
Mabiliana was really distressed at being urged to tell a fairy-story by daylight. To do so—according to all Kafir traditions—was to invoke the wrath of a wicked spirit. Many a beauty had been known to become as hideous as an "Imbula," or ogre, after that. But rather than refuse the children, many of whom she loved dearly, Mabiliana decided to tell the story, then she asked for a piece of glass. Tucking this quickly into her hair, to ward off the evil, she combed her woolly locks over it, using the long mimosa thorn which she carried stuck through her ear. Then carefully replacing the thorn, and, taking a pinch of snuff, she began her story.
The children listened in breathless, big-eyed silence. Spellbound they held their breath as the story reached the terrible moment when the "Mollmeit" appeared—the monster "who killed and ate little girls, and—"
Outside the loud sound of approaching hoof-beats stopping at the kraal startled the boys.
"Oh, it's daddy come for me!" whispered conscience-stricken George to Petrus, as he burst from the kraal into the inky blackness outside, calling:
"Daddy! Where are you?"
Petrus dashed after him. He heard one terrified shriek, followed by the thud, thud, thud, of a galloping horse's hoofs—growing fainter and fainter, then silence, but for the loud cackling and barking of the hens and dogs.
"George! Where are you? George! George!" frantically called Petrus, peering through the inky darkness in every direction.