The girl crushed an ice-plant leaf between her fingers.
“Tant Sannie is a miserable old woman,” she said. “Your father married her when he was dying, because he thought she would take better care of the farm, and of us, than an English woman. He said we should be taught and sent to school. Now she saves every farthing for herself, buys us not even one old book. She does not ill-use us—why? Because she is afraid of your father’s ghost. Only this morning she told her Hottentot that she would have beaten you for breaking the plate, but that three nights ago she heard a rustling and a grunting behind the pantry door, and knew it was your father coming to spook her. She is a miserable old woman,” said the girl, throwing the leaf from her; “but I intend to go to school.”
“And if she won’t let you?”
“I shall make her.”
“How?”
The child took not the slightest notice of the last question, and folded her small arms across her knees.
“But why do you want to go, Lyndall?”
“There is nothing helps in this world,” said the child slowly, “but to be very wise, and to know everything—to be clever.”
“But I should not like to go to school!” persisted the small freckled face.
“And you do not need to. When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go; you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; but I,” said Lyndall, “will have nothing. I must learn.”