thrusting his way to the front. The old lady looked at him across the
table.

"What is coming now?" she repeated shortly--a way she had with those of
the speaker's age and type.

"Why, the war, of course. We are going to drive the English out of the
country. The Patriot says so."

The old lady snorted.

"_You_ look like driving anybody out of the country, Theunis Venter,
even the English. You'd be afraid to lie behind an antheap waiting to
shoot _rooi-baatjes_ for fear of spoiling that pretty waistcoat of
yours"--looking him up and down contemptuously. "And his tight
riding-breeches--oh!--oh! wouldn't they split? And the rings! And yet
you don't look like an Englishman, Theunis, not even in your grand
English clothes."

A roar of applause and derision from that section of her hearers which
had not enjoyed the advantage of a South African College education and a
parent with advanced ideas and generous bank-balance greeted the old
woman's scoffing words.

"_Ja, Ja_, Theunis, that is just what the Patriot said," they chorussed.
But the young fellow looked sulky--very much so. He was one of that
type of young Boer who no longer thinks it the mark of a man and a
patriot to sleep in his clothes and wear his hat in the house. Nor was
he the only one of that type there present. Others took his side, and
hurled corresponding gibes at the conservative party, and the uproar
became simply deafening, all talking and bellowing at once.

But if it be imagined that this turn of affairs caused the slightest
uneasiness or alarm to the fair sex as there represented, the notion can
be dismissed forthwith. There was a twinkle of mirth in the old lady's
eyes which belied the sardonic droop of her mouth, and as for the girls
they looked as placid and unconcerned as though some thirty odd
infuriated males were not bawling the very house down within a couple of
yards of them.

"There--there!" sang out Vrouw Grobbelaar when she had had enough of it.
"Make not such a row, for dear Heaven's sake! Theunis, you are not
such a bad sort of boy after all, for all your trimmed moustache and
English clothes. Hendrina, give him a _soepje_--that is to say, if he
does not turn up his nose at the good liquor his father drank before
him. I'm told that the English get drunk on stuff made from smoked
wood, down in Cape Town. Only one, though--I won't encourage young men
to drink, but the night is cold, and he has a long way to ride. Af