All was lost. The Chinaman had up an' give Emigration Jane away. Certainly he had saved her trouble, but what was he sayin' now, the 'orrible slant-eyed 'eathen? She could hardly hear him for the roaring in her poor bewildered head.
"S'pose John tell, can catchee more tikkie? Plenty tikkie want to buy chow, allee so baddee times."
"Always on the make, ain't you?" commented W. Keyse. With a strong, imperious shove, he dumped the blue bundle down among the cowslips in which the feet of the guilty fair were hidden, saying sternly: "I give you three minutes to git it off your chest, else kickie is wot you'll catch instead o' tikkie." He furnished a moderate sample on account.
"Oh, ki—ah. Oh, ki—ah!" moaned the tingling John.
"Don't you be 'ard on him, William"—he hardly knew the voice, it was so weak and small—"it's Gawspel truth. To pay you out—at first, for juggin' Walt, I did write them letters—every bloomin' screeve."
"An' sent the pipe and baccy for a birthday present, to make a blushin' fool o' me?" yelled the infuriated Keyse. "All for the crimson sake of a fat 'og of a Dutchman!"
The patriot to whom he referred, mounted on an attenuated mule, and escorted by a Sergeant and six men of the B.S.A., under the superintendence of a large pink officer of the Staff, was at that moment being conducted at a sharp trot out of the lines, to meet a smallish waggon pulled by a span of four that was being brought down from Tweipans by half a dozen Boers in weathered tan-cord and velveteen, battered pot-hats and ragged shooting-jackets, carrying very carefully-tended rifles, mounted on well-fed, wiry little horses, and accompanied by a White Flag. If she had known, what would it have mattered to her? All her thoughts were centred in this furious little man, whose pale, ugly eyes fairly blazed at her, as he repeated:
"To pay—me out. You brawsted little Treachery, you——"
She crimsoned to her hair; you could see the red blood rushing and rushing up from under the peekaboo embroidery in front of the tawdry blowse, in a hurry to tell her tingling ears what cruel names he called her.
"To pay you out at first it was. An' afterwards"—her throat hurt her, and her eyes did smart and burn so—"afterwards I—I wanted ... O Gawd!..." she shook all over—"you'll never walk out wi' me no more after this!"