k the strong coffee I made for
them, and passed the whiskey bottle to and fro between
them. All the while Kornel babbled amiably of foolish
things, sunsets, and Shakespeare and the ways of women,
till I caught myself wondering whether indeed he relished
the change from the wide clean veld of the farm to this
squalid habitation of toil.

"'I suppose,' said my father at last, when Kornel had
finished talking about sunsets,--'I suppose a ragoo, as you
call it, is very expensive to make?'

"'I really couldn't say,' answered Kornel. 'But I should
think not.'

"'H'm; and you think a Kafir could not be taught to make
them?'

"Kornel laughed. 'I should be sorry to try,' he said.

"My father pondered on that for a while, smoking strongly
and glancing from time to time at me.

"'I'm growing an old man,' he said at last, 'and old men
are lonely at the best.'

"'Some seem to wish it,' said Kornel.

"'I say they are lonely,' repeated my father sharply. 'I
have no wife, and I cannot be bothered with getting another
at my time of life.' He shook his gray head sadly. 'Not
that I should have to look far for one,' he added, however.

"Kornel laughed, and my father looked at him angrily.

"'If it had not been for you,' he said, 'I should still
have had my daughter Christina to live with me. I am tired
of being alone, and I cannot nurse the wrong done me by my
own flesh and blood. You and Christina had better come out
to the farm and live with me.'

"'And leave my business?' asked Kornel.

"'Oh, there is mud and water on the farm, if your business
pleases you,' retorted my father. 'But out there we do not
take the bread out of the mouths of Kafirs.'

"'I see,' answered Kornel briefly; and I, who watched him,
knew from his voice that there was to be no truce after
that, that we should still earn our livelihood by the mud
bricks.

"'You will come?' asked my father.

"'Good Lord, no!' replied Kornel. 'You would weary me to
death in a week, I don't mind being civil when we meet, but
live with you! It would be to make oneself a vegetable.'

"My father heard him out with a grave face, and then rose
to his feet. There was a stateliness in his manner that
grieved me, for when a man meets a rebuff with silence and
dignity he is aging.

"'You are right, perhaps,' he said. 'I don't know, but you
may be. Anyhow, I have enjoyed an excellent meal, and I
thank you. Good-bye, Christina!'

"When he was gone, Kornel turned to