"Lor', gracious goodness, no! What will you think of next?" She lied, rallying him, with jealousy eating at her own poor heart. "Can't git away, that's all. Them Sisters are so precious sharp. An'—'Go an' tell 'im,' she says, ''e'll 'ave to put up with you this once. An' you'll come back an' tell me all about 'im!'"
He swallowed the bait, and her spirits revived. Emigration Jane, if not the rose, lived with it. Strictly speaking, they spent a pleasant Sunday, though when he found himself forgetting the absent one, he pulled himself sharply up. He saw her part of the way home; more she would not allow.
"And—and"—she whispered at their parting, her eyes avoiding his—"if she can't git out next Sunday—an' it's a chance whether she does, that Sister Tobias being such a watchful old cat—would you like to 'ave me meet you an' tell you all about 'er?"
W. Keyse assented, even eagerly, and so it began. Behold the poor deceiver drinking perilous joys, and learning to shudder at the thought of discovery. Think of her cherishing his letters, those passionate epistles addressed to the owner of the golden pigtail.
Think of her pouring out her poor full heart in those wildly-spelt missives that found their way to him, and be a little pitiful.
She did not thirst for that revenge now. But, oh! the day would come when he would find out and have his, in casting her off, with what contempt and loathing of her treachery she wept at night to picture. This feeling, that lifted you to Heaven one instant, and cast you down to Hell the next, was Love. Passion for the man, not yearning for the hearth-place, and the sheltering roof, and the security of marriage.
She left off walking round the gaol—indeed, rather avoided the vicinity of the casket that for her had once held a treasure. What would the Slabberts think of his little Boer-wife that was to have been? What would he say and do when they let him out? She took to losing breath and colour at the sound of a heavy step behind her, and would shrink close to the martial figure of W. Keyse when any hulking form distantly resembling the Boer's loomed up in the distance.
Oh, shame on her, the doubly false! But—but—she had never been so orful 'appy. Oh, what a queer thing was Love! If only—— But never, never would he. She was mistaken.
There came a moment when W. Keyse swerved from the path of single-hearted devotion to the unseen but ever-present wearer of the golden pigtail.
As Christmas drew near, and Gueldersdorp, not yet sensible of the belly-pinch of famine, sought to relieve its tense muscles and weary brains by getting up an entertainment here and there, W. Keyse escorted his beloved—by proxy, as usual—to a Sunday smoking-concert, given in a cleared-out Army Service Stores shed, lent by Imperial Government to the promoters of the entertainment.