"'Do you?' said my father. 'Well, I have nothing to give you. Christina, come here to me!'
"Kornel loosed his arm and set me free, but I stayed where
I was.
"'Father,' I cried, 'I have promised Kornel!'
"'Come here!' he said again. Then, when I did not move, disobeying him for the first time in my life, his face darkened. 'Are you not coming?' he said.
"'No,' I answered, and my man's arm took me again, tight— tight, Katje.
"'Well,' said my father, 'you had better be off, the two of you. Do not come here again.'
"'We can do that much to please you,' answered Kornel, with his head very high. 'Come, Christina!'
"And I followed him from my father's house. I had not even a hat for my head.
"We were married forthwith, of course—no later than the next day,—and the day after that I rode with my man to the plot beside the dorp spruit to see our home that had to be. That was a great day for me; and to be going in gentle companionship with Kornel across the staring veld and along the empty road was a most wonderful thing, and its flavor is still a relish to my memory. I knew that he feared what we were to see—the littleness and mean poverty of it, after the spaciousness of the farm; but most of all it galled him that I should see it on this our first triumphant day. He was very gentle and most loving, but shadows grew on his face, and there was a track of worry between his brows that spurred me. I knew what I had to do, now that our fortunes were knitted, and I did it.
"The plot was a slope from the edge of the dorp to the little spruit, not fenced nor sundered in any way from the squalid brick which houses the lower end of Dopfontein. Full in face of it was the location of the Kafirs; around it and close at hand were the gross and dirty huts of the off-colors (half-castes). The house, which was in the middle of the plot, was a bulging hovel of green brick, no more stately or respectable than any of the huts round about. As our horses picked their way through the muck underfoot, and we rode down to it, the off-colors swarmed out of their burrows and grinned and pointed at us.