There was a giggle of appreciation among the half-dozen men and youths collected at the gate of the farm enclosure.
"No good, Amurrica; chuck it! Bert'll git there every time," said someone cheerfully.
Amurrica snorted.
"Talkin', indeed! Why, you low-downers in this all-fired continent of Africa, you don' know what talkin' means!"
"Usually means lyin' over in America, don't it?" said Bert casually.
His eyes were fixed on vacancy as he spoke; the chatter of the group around him was nothing but a weariness, like the buzzing of flies. His mind was fixed upon what was going on in the low frame house, with the corrugated iron roof, that stood within the enclosure. He was experiencing something more like anxiety than he had ever felt before in all his four-and-twenty years.
It was oppressively hot. For miles and miles, the pitiless sun lit up the endless veldt, which undulated all around the little township: wild, yet with a dreadful sameness in it.
"As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be," seemed written upon the face of the desert; yet here and there its dignity was scarred, its monotony interfered with, by the ugliness and meanness of human habitation. The beginnings of civilisation, without simplicity as they were without harmony, jarred every sense. The places seemed to be devoid of self-respect or privacy; to consist, in fact, entirely of back premises. Rows of dingy linen flapped upon lines, on ground where the grass was irregularly worn away here and there by the treading of feet. Collections of old meat tins, old kettles, old shoes, heaped upon kitchen refuse, burdened the stale air with miasma. A wretched-looking, lean-to building bore a huge board with the flaunting inscription:
MOUNT PLEASANT BOARDING-HOUSE FOR
GENTLEMEN
The gentlemen who boarded there were mostly assembled to-night at the gate of "Lutwyche's."