Sitting down on a low stool, she placed the patient—so to speak—on its back, between her knees, and held it fast; then she rammed the liver and egg down its throat with her fingers as far as they would reach, after which she set it on its legs and left it for a few minutes to contemplation. Hitching it suddenly on its back again, she repeated the operation until it had had enough. In regard to quantity, she regulated herself by feeling its stomach. In the matter of drink she was more pronounced than a teetotaler, for she gave it none at all.
Thus she continued perseveringly to act until the young ostrich was old enough to go out in charge of a little Hottentot girl named Hreikie, who became a very sister to it, and whose life thence-forward was spent either in going to sleep under bushes, on the understanding that she was taking care of baby, or in laughing at the singular way in which her charge waltzed when in a facetious mood.
There is no doubt that this ostrich would have reached a healthy maturity if its career had not been cut short by a hyena.
Not until many years after this did “ostrich-farming” and feather-exporting become, as it still continues, one of the most important branches of commercial enterprise in the Cape Colony; but we cannot avoid the conclusion, that, as Watt gave the first impulse to the steam-engine when he sat and watched the boiling kettle, so Mrs Marais opened the door to a great colonial industry when she held that infant ostrich between her knees, and stuffed it with minced eggs and liver.
Chapter Fourteen.
The Bergenaars.
“So you like the study of French?” said Charlie Considine, as he sat one morning beside Bertha Marais in the porch of her father’s dwelling.
“Yes, very much,” answered the girl. She said no more, but she thought, “Especially when I am taught it by such a kind, painstaking teacher as you.”