"Let 's call it a joke," said the tramp. "Once when I was nearly dying of thirst up beyond Kimberly, a feller that I asked for water gave me a cup of paraffin. That was another joke. Tramps are fair game for you jokers, aren't they? Well, if that meal you spoke about wasn't a joke, too, let 's be getting up to the house."
"All right," said Paul. He hesitated a minute, for he hated to part with the thing he had made. "Oh, it can go," he exclaimed, and threw the clay up over the wall. It fell into the dam above their heads with a splash.
"I didn't mean any joke, truly," he assured the tramp.
"Don't rub it in," begged the other. "We don't want to make a song about it. And anyhow, I want to try to forget it. So come on—do."
They came together through the kraals and across the deserted yard to the house-door, the tramp looking about him at the apparatus of well-fed and well-roofed life with an expression of genial approval. Paul would have taken him round to the back-door, but he halted.
"Not bad," he commented. "Not bad at all, considering. An' this is the way in, I suppose."
"We 'd better go round," suggested Paul, but the tramp turned on the doorstep and waved a nonchalant hand.
"Oh, this 'll do," he said, and there was nothing for Paul to do but to follow him into the little passage.
The door of the parlor stood open, and within was Mrs. du Preez, flicking a duster at the furniture in a desultory fashion. The tramp paused and looked at her appraisingly.
"The lady of the house, no doubt," he surmised, with his terrible showy smile, before she could speak. "It 's the boy, madam; he wouldn't take no for an answer. I had to come home to supper with him."