Outa’s eyes gleamed pityingly. These young things! What did they know of the ups and downs of a hard world where the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift?
“But, my baasje, Outa did not make up the story. He only put in little bits, like the newspaper and the spectacles and the Jew smouse, that are things of to-day. But the real story was made long, long ago, perhaps when baasje’s people went about in skins like the Rooi Kafirs, and Outa’s people were still monkeys in the bushveld. It has always been so, and it will always be so—in the story and in the old wicked world. It is the head, my baasjes, the head,” he tapped his own, “and not the strong arms and legs and teeth, that makes one animal master over another. Ach yes! if the Bushman’s head had been the same as the white man’s, arré! what a fight there would have been between them!”
And lost in the astonishing train of thought called up by this idea, he sat gazing out before him with eyes which saw many strange things. Then, rousing himself, with a quick change of voice and manner, “Ach! please, Nooi!” he said in a wheedling tone, “a span of tobacco—just one little span for to-night and to-morrow.”
His mistress laughed indulgently, and, unhooking the bunch of keys from her belt, handed them to Cousin Minnie. “The old sinner!” she said. “We all spoil him, and yet who could begin to be strict with him now? Only a small piece, Minnie.”
“Thank you, thank you, my Nonnie,” said the old man, holding out both hands, and receiving the coveted span as if it were something very precious. “That’s my young lady! Nonnie can have Outa’s skeleton when he is dead. Yes, it will be a fine skeleton for Nonnie to send far across the blue water, where she sent the old long-dead Bushman’s bones. Ach foei! all of him went into a little soap boxie—just to think of it! a soap boxie!”
He started as a young coloured girl made her appearance. “O mij lieve! here is Lys already. How the time goes when a person is with the baasjes and the noois! Night, Baas; night, Nooi; night, Nonnie and little masters. Sleep well! Ach! the beautiful family Van der Merwe!”
His thanks, farewells and flatteries grew fainter and fainter, and finally died away in the distance, as his granddaughter led him away.