Chapter 1.III. I Was A Stranger, and Ye Took Me In.
As the two girls rounded the side of the kopje, an unusual scene presented itself. A large group was gathered at the back door of the homestead.
On the doorstep stood the Boer-woman, a hand on each hip, her face red and fiery, her head nodding fiercely. At her feet sat the yellow Hottentot maid, her satellite, and around stood the black Kaffer maids, with blankets twisted round their half-naked figures. Two, who stamped mealies in a wooden block, held the great stampers in their hands, and stared stupidly at the object of attraction. It certainly was not to look at the old German overseer, who stood in the centre of the group, that they had all gathered together. His salt-and-pepper suit, grizzly black beard, and grey eyes were as familiar to every one on the farm as the red gables of the homestead itself; but beside him stood the stranger, and on him all eyes were fixed. Ever and anon the newcomer cast a glance over his pendulous red nose to the spot where the Boer-woman stood, and smiled faintly.
“I’m not a child,” cried the Boer-woman, in low Cape Dutch, “and I wasn’t born yesterday. No, by the Lord, no! You can’t take me in! My mother didn’t wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye and I see the whole thing. I’ll have no tramps sleeping on my farm,” cried Tant Sannie blowing. “No, by the devil, no! not though he had sixty-times-six red noses.”
There the German overseer mildly interposed that the man was not a tramp, but a highly respectable individual, whose horse had died by an accident three days before.
“Don’t tell me,” cried the Boer-woman; “the man isn’t born that can take me in. If he’d had money, wouldn’t he have bought a horse? Men who walk are thieves, liars, murderers, Rome’s priests, seducers! I see the devil in his nose!” cried Tant Sannie shaking her fist at him; “and to come walking into the house of this Boer’s child and shaking hands as though he came on horseback! Oh, no, no!”
The stranger took off his hat, a tall, battered chimneypot, and disclosed a bald head, at the back of which was a little fringe of curled white hair, and he bowed to Tant Sannie.
“What does she remark, my friend?” he inquired, turning his crosswise-looking eyes on the old German.
The German rubbed his old hands and hesitated.