“Come, Em,” said Lyndall, lifting her small proud head, “let us go in. We will not stay to hear such language.”
She looked into the Boer-woman’s eyes. Tant Sannie understood the meaning of the look if not the words. She waddled after them, and caught Em by the arm. She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had never done it again, so she took Em.
“So you will defy me, too, will you, you Englishman’s ugliness!” she cried, and with one hand she forced the child down, and held her head tightly against her knee; with the other she beat her first upon one cheek, and then upon the other.
For one instant Lyndall looked on, then she laid her small fingers on the Boer-woman’s arm. With the exertion of half its strength Tant Sannie might have flung the girl back upon the stones. It was not the power of the slight fingers, tightly though they clinched her broad wrist—so tightly that at bedtime the marks were still there; but the Boer-woman looked into the clear eyes and at the quivering white lips, and with a half-surprised curse relaxed her hold. The girl drew Em’s arm through her own.
“Move!” she said to Bonaparte, who stood in the door, and he, Bonaparte the invincible, in the hour of his triumph, moved to give her place.
The Hottentot ceased to laugh, and an uncomfortable silence fell on all the three in the doorway.
Once in their room, Em sat down on the floor and wailed bitterly. Lyndall lay on the bed with her arm drawn across her eyes, very white and still.
“Hoo, hoo!” cried Em; “and they won’t let him take the grey mare; and Waldo has gone to the mill. Hoo, hoo, and perhaps they won’t let us go and say good-bye to him. Hoo, hoo, hoo!”
“I wish you would be quiet,” said Lyndall without moving. “Does it give you such felicity to let Bonaparte know he is hurting you? We will ask no one. It will be suppertime soon. Listen—and when you hear the clink of the knives and forks we will go out and see him.”
Em suppressed her sobs and listened intently, kneeling at the door. Suddenly some one came to the window and put the shutter up.