Once in a week, breakfast at the Sanatorium gained a vivid and even a breathless quality from the fact that one found the weekly letters piled between one's knife and fork, as though Mrs. Jakes knew—no doubt she did—that her guests would make the chief part of their meal on the contents of the envelopes. The Kafir runner who brought them from the station arrived in the early dawn and nobody saw him but Mrs. Jakes; she was the human link between the abstractions of the post-office and those who had the right to open the letters and be changed for the day by their contents. It was not invariably that the mail included letters for her, and these too would be put in order on the breakfast table, under the tap of the urn, and not opened till the others were down. Then Mrs. Jakes also, like a well-connected Jack Horner, could pull from the eloquence of her correspondents an occasional plum of information to pass round the table.
"Only think!" she would offer. "The Duchess of York has got another baby. Let me see now! How many does that make?"
It was always Mr. Samson who was down first on mail-mornings, and his was always the largest budget. His seat was at the end of the table nearest the window, and he would read sitting a little sideways in his chair, with the letter held well up to the light and his right eyebrow clenched on a monocle. Fat letters of many sheets, long letters on thin foreign paper, newspapers, circulars—they made up enough to keep him reading the whole morning, and thoughtful most of the afternoon. From this feast he would scatter crumbs of fashionable or sporting intelligence, and always he would have something to say about the state of the weather in England when the post left, three weeks before.
"Just think!" he continued. "Frost already—and fogs! Frost, Miss Harding; instead of this sultry old dust-heap. How does that strike you? Eh?"
"It leaves me cold," returned Margaret agreeably.
"Cold!" he retorted, snorting. "Well, I 'd give something to shiver again, something handsome. What 's that you 're saying, Ford?"
Ford had passed a post-card to Mrs. Jakes to read and now received it back from her.
"It 's Van Zyl," he replied. "He writes that he 'll be coming past this afternoon, about tea time, and he 'll look in. I was telling Mrs. Jakes."
"Good!" said Mr. Samson.
"It's a man I know," Ford explained to Margaret. "He looks me up occasionally. He 's in the Cape Mounted Police and a Dutchman. You 'll be in for tea?"