“How stupid you are, Hans! If the new life were behind me I might be able to answer, but how can I tell how I shall like what I don’t know anything about?”
“Nay, but you know something of the beginning of it,” returned the young Dutchman, with an amused smile, “and you have heard much of what is yet to come. What do you think of the prospect before you?”
“Think of the prospect?” repeated Gertie, knitting her brows and looking down with a pretended air of profound thought; “let me see: the prospect as I’ve heard father say to mother,—which was just a repetition of what I had heard him previously say to these queer brothers Skyd—is a life in the bush—by which I suppose he means the bushes—in which we shall have to cut down the trees, plough up the new soil, build our cottages, rear our sheep and cattle, milk our cows, make our butter, grow our food, and sometimes hunt it, fashion our clothing, and protect our homes. Is that right?”
“Well, that’s just about it,” was the answer; “how do you like that prospect?”
“I delight in it,” cried the girl, with a flash in her brilliant black eyes, while she half laughed at her own sudden burst of enthusiasm. “Only fancy! mother milking the cows, and me making butter, and Scholtz ploughing, and Dally planting, and nurse tending Junkie and making all sorts of garments, while father goes out with his gun to shoot food and protect us from the Kafirs.”
“’Tis a pleasant picture,” returned Hans, with a bland smile, “and I hope may be soon realised—I must bid you goodbye now, Gertie, we separate here.”
“Do you go far away?” asked the girl, with a touch of sadness, as she put her little hand into that of the young giant.
“A goodish bit. Some six or eight days’ journey from here,—according to the weather.”
“You’ll come and see us some day, won’t you, Hans?”
“Ja—I will,” replied Hans, with emphasis.