Part 24 (1/2)

”In Bond Street it is just possible that I should. On an African sheep farm the escort is appropriate,” she answered, with a flash of merriment in her lovely, changing eyes.

The distance to the house was not great, but Claverton contrived to render it as great as possible.

”How is it you are out all alone?” he asked, as they walked along.

”Oh, the fact is, Mrs Brathwaite and the girls were busy, very busy. I wouldn't for the world abuse my guest's privilege, so I slipped off on a solitary voyage of discovery.”

”And a pretty sort of discovery you made! By-the-bye, I have had no opportunity of asking if you had quite recovered from yesterday's fatigue, and it has been lying heavily on my conscience. You did not appear at breakfast, and we have been desperately busy all the morning.”

There was a tender ring in his tones as he made this very commonplace observation which could hardly have escaped the other. She answered very sweetly:

”I am afraid I was dreadfully lazy. But I was a little tired this morning. It shan't occur again; there!”

”You must rest to-day, then, because they are getting up a dance to-night in your honour. You are literally to make your _debut_ here.

Didn't they tell you?”

”Now I think of it, they did. Here we are at the house, Mr Claverton.

Thanks, so much, for accompanying me.”

”And now I shall catch it. The dear old man hates any of us to thrash a n.i.g.g.e.r. Stand by and support me under my castigation.”

Claverton had seen Mr Brathwaite in the hall, and lost no time in telling him what had happened. The old settler shook his head as he listened.

”It won't do,” he said. ”You'll never get any good out of them if you take to hammering them. They cut off to the district town and lay an information against you, and you're summoned before the magistrate, and put to no end of bother. And that's not all. It has a bad effect on the others. They know they'll get the better of you in court, and invariably do get it; and once a black fellow thinks he can get the better of you in any way, then good-bye to your authority. Besides, it earns you a bad name among the Kafirs, which means a constant difficulty in obtaining labour, and when you do obtain it you only get the refuse.

There's Thorman, for instance. He used to lick his Kafirs for the least thing, and he never kept a decent servant on his place two months at a time. I advised him to knock off that plan, and he did; but for years afterwards he suffered from its effects, in the shape of a constant lack of decent labour. No; it doesn't pay, take my word for it.”

”Well, but you've no idea how cheeky that fellow was, and has been for some time past,” urged Claverton.

The other merely shrugged his shoulders with the air of a man unconvinced, and repeated as he turned away: ”It doesn't do.”

Claverton shot a glance at his late companion as much as to say; ”There, I told you how it would be,” and caught a bright, rapid smile in return.

Then he went back to his work.

Hard by the scene of the recent row was the dipping tank, oblong in shape, fifteen feet by five and about eight in depth. It was two-thirds full of a decoction of lime and sulphur, and into this the sheep were dropped, and after swimming about for a couple of minutes or so were suffered to emerge, by the raising of a sliding door at one end. This end, unlike the other, was not perpendicular, but the floor was on a sufficient slope to enable the animals to walk out, which they did, and stood dripping in a stone-paved enclosure also with a shelving floor so that the liquid that drained off them should run back into the tank. At the other end was a larger enclosure containing several hundred sheep, which four or five Kafirs, among them the recreant Mopela, were busy catching for the purpose of dipping them in the unsavoury but scab-eradicating mixture. Over which operation presided Hicks and Claverton, each with a forked pole in his hand, wherewith to administer the necessary ducking to the immersed quadrupeds. At last Hicks proposed that they should knock off, and come back and finish after dinner.

”Not worth while, is it?” was the reply. ”Let's finish off now we're at it, then we can take things easy, clothed and in our right minds. We can hardly go inside the house, even, in this beastly mess.”

Claverton carries his point, as he generally does. So they work on and on in the heat and the dust, and the air is full of splashes as the kicking animals are dropped into the tank, and redolent with the ill savour of sulphur and lime and perspiring natives; and the contents of one of the great cauldrons simmering over the fire are thrown in to replenish the medicinal bath, and the number of sheep left undipped waxes smaller and beautifully less, till at length the last half-dozen are disposed of and the job is at an end.

Then Hicks suggested a swim in the dam, and the proposal was soon carried into effect. After which, in renewed attire and presentable once more, they appeared among the rest of the household.

To some at least in that household has come among them a change; an element of upheaval certainly not even dreamed of by all whom it shall concern. A change. The acquisition of a beautiful and agreeable young lady visitor by this circle? No, something more than that.

Mrs Brathwaite playfully upbraided Claverton for being the unconscious cause of frightening her visitor on the first morning of her arrival.

Then Lilian came to the rescue. If she had been startled it was her own fault or ill fortune for going where she was not wanted. Here vehement protest from him whose cause she was pleading. Then, she urged, he who had been the means of startling her had made all the amends in his power by seeing her safely home, coward as she was to need it. Here more vehement protest.

What does this vehemence mean on the part of a man to whose nature it is wholly foreign, who is calmness and equability itself?

This question--partly its own answer--flashed through Ethel's mind. She was to all appearances deep in discussion with Laura and Hicks as to certain debatable arrangements for the coming festivity. In reality she was performing that extremely difficult feat, keeping an ear for two distinct conversations. In the course of which difficult feat Ethel was wondering how it was that these adventuresses (yes, that is the word she used) with nothing on earth to recommend them, should have the power of taking everybody by storm in the way their visitor seemed to be doing.