Sisters are not sensitive as a rule to subtle alterations in the regard of their brothers, but the German drummer's refugee-widow could not but read in the face and demeanour of her relative a perceptible diminution of interest in a woman who had no more money.... He kept on his broad-brimmed hat and pulled at his bushy whiskers as he exchanged a palpable wink with Trudi, who was accustomed, when the gracious lady's brother called, to retire with her knitting behind the shiny American cloth-covered screen that coyly shielded the washstand from a visitor's observation.
Those flat, light eyes of the visitor's twinkled oddly as Lady Hannah's indignant whisper told of the missing footgear and the vanished revolver, and her conviction that the screened knitter was the active agent in their spiriting away.
"You believe the girl's slewed on you, eh, and that things are going to pan out rough? Well, sure, that's a pity!" The big man lolled against the deal table, covered with a cloth reproducing in crude aniline colours, trying to the complexion, but gratifying to the patriotic soul of Mevrouw Kink, the red, white, and blue stripes of the Vierkleur, with the green staff-line carried all round as an ornamental border. "And I'd not wonder but you were right." He stuck his thumbs in his belt, and asked, with his hatted head on one side and a jeering grin on his bold red mouth: "So, now, and what did you think to do?"
Lady Hannah controlled an impulse to knock off the big man's broad-brimmed felt, and even smiled back in the grinning face.... One very little lady can hold a great deal of anger and resentment without spilling any over, if she is thoroughly convinced that it would be imprudent as well as useless to display either.
"As you gather, I intend returning to Gueldersdorp to-morrow at latest. I shall not take my maid, as she wishes for her own reasons to remain behind. Please have the mare and spider here by mid-day coffee-time. We can drive north towards Haargrond and double back when we're beyond the lines, as the coursed hare would do."
Van Busch's red mouth gleamed, curved back from his tobacco-stained teeth. He said with meaning:
"Boers shoot hares—not run them."
"They may shoot or not shoot," proclaimed Lady Hannah. "I start to-morrow."
"Without boots or shoes?" asked the red-edged, yellow-fanged smile.
"Barefoot if I must," she answered, with all the more spirit that she felt like the hare struggling in a wire. "Please send for the mare and the trap. I leave this place to-morrow."