Now there could be no shadow of doubt that this was an open-breasted cut at young Fanie van Tromp, whose affection for Katje was a matter of talk on the farms, and whose overtures that young lady had consistently sterilized with ridicule.
The Vrouw Grobelaar was void of delicacy. "Fanie is a good lad," she said, "and when his father dies he will have a very large property."
"It'll console him for not adding me to his live stock," retorted Katje.
"He is handsome, too," continued the old lady. "His beard is as black as—"
"A carrion-crow," added Katje promptly.
"Quite," agreed the Vrouw Grobelaar, with a perfect unconsciousness of the unsavoriness of the suggestion.
"And he walks like a duck with sore feet," went on Katje. "He is as graceful as a trek-ox, and his conversational talents are those of a donkey in long grass."
"All that is a young girl's nonsense," observed the old lady. "I was like that once myself. But when one grows a little older and fatter, and there is less about one to take a man's eye,—a fickle thing, Katje, a fickle thing,— one looks for more in a husband than a light foot and a smart figure."
Katje was a trifle abashed, for all the daughters of her house, were they never so slender, grew tubby in their twenties.
"Besides," continued the worthy Vrouw, "your talk is chaff from a mill. It must come out to leave the meal clean. Perhaps, after all, Fanie is the man to carry you off. I think you would not take so much trouble to worry him if you thought nothing of him."