During this bombardment of queries the host and hostess were not forgetful to supply their young guest with the viands under which the substantial table groaned, while several of the younger members of the family, including the pretty Bertha, stood behind the rest and waited on them. With the exception of the host and hostess, none of the household spoke during the meal, all being fully occupied in listening eagerly and eating heartily.
When the Dutch fire began to slacken for want of ammunition, Considine retaliated by opening a British battery, and soon learned that Marais and his wife both claimed, and were not a little proud of, a few drops of French blood. Their progenitors on the mother’s side, they said, were descended from one of the French Huguenot families which settled in the colony after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
“You see,” said Mynheer Marais, with a quiet smile of satisfaction, as he applied a boiled cob of mealies or Indian corn to his powerful teeth, “our family may be said to be about two-thirds Dutch and one-third French. In fact, we have also a little English blood in our veins, for my great-grandfather’s mother was English on the father’s side and Dutch on the mother’s. Perhaps this accounts to some extent for my tendency to adopt some English and American ideas in the improvement of my farm, which is not a characteristic of my Cape-Dutch brethren.”
“So I have been told, and to some extent have seen,” said Considine, with a sly glance; “in fact they appear to be rather lazy than otherwise.”
“Not lazy, young sir,” returned Marais with some emphasis. “They are easy-going and easily satisfied, and not solicitous to add to their material comforts beyond a certain point—in short, contented with little, like Frenchmen, which is a praiseworthy condition of mind, commended in Holy Writ, and not disposed to make haste to be rich, like you English.”
“Ah, I see,” rejoined Considine, who observed a twinkle in the eyes of some of Mynheer’s stalwart sons.
“Yes,” pursued the farmer, buttering another mealie-cob, and commencing to eat it with infinite gusto, “you see, the Cape Dutchmen, although as fine a set of men as ever lived, are just a little too contented and slow; on the other hand, young sir, you English are much too reckless and fast—”
“Just so,” interrupted Considine, bowing his thanks to the hostess for a third venison-steak which she had put on his plate; “the Dutch too slow, the English too fast, so that three parts Dutch, two parts French, and one part English—like a dash of seasoning—is, it seems, the perfect Marais mixture.”
This remark produced a sudden and unintentional burst of laughter from the young Maraises, not so much on account of the excess of humour contained in it, as from the fact that never before had they heard a jest of any kind fabricated at the expense of their father, of whom they stood much in awe, and for whom they had a profound respect.
Conrad Marais, however, could take a joke, although not much given to making one. He smiled blandly over the edge of his mealie-cob.