“I will go with you when you marry me, Max.”
“How can I marry you when you are only nineteen and your uncle will not give his consent?”
“I will wait for you. Go away, and you will find me here when you come back—if there is any water left in the well.”
“I do not want to go away without you, and I feel I cannot endure to stay. Why are you afraid to trust me?”
“I am not afraid to trust you, but—while you were talking at first I was thinking. I thought to myself that we could not get away and that there was no place for us to go to.”
“You can leave all that to me—”
“No, no, it cannot be. If you want to marry me, Max, you must make up your mind never to live in any place but Bushmanland—”
“What! live all our lives at Namies?”
“No, not at Namies. Bushmanland is large; there are many camps and many water-places in it. You know that I am only a poor Boer girl and that I could not live among those women whose pictures you showed me in the fashion books and who never speak anything but English; you would be ashamed of me and I should want to come back to live among the people I know.”
Max, after the manner of lovers, assured her that he never could, under any possible circumstances, be ashamed of her. She continued in the same strain as formerly—