g, the walls were covered with vines and
roses, and the kraals were not made of red stone, but of lilac trees
full of blossom. And the fat old Boer smiled at her; and the stick he
held across the door, for the goats to jump over, was a lily rod with
seven blossoms at the end. When she went to the house her mistress gave
her a whole roaster-cake for her supper, and the mistress's daughter
had stuck a rose in the cake; and her mistress's son-in-law said, "Thank
you!" when she pulled off his boots, and did not kick her.

It was a beautiful dream.

While she lay thus dreaming, one of the little kids came and licked her
on her cheek, because of the salt from her dried-up tears. And in her
dream she was not a poor indentured child any more, living with Boers.
It was her father who kissed her. He said he had only been asleep--that
day when he lay down under the thorn-bush; he had not really died. He
felt her hair, and said it was grown long and silky, and he said they
would go back to Denmark now. He asked her why her feet were bare, and
what the marks on her back were. Then he put her head on his shoulder,
and picked her up, and carried her away, away! She laughed--she could
feel her face against his brown beard. His arms were so strong.

As she lay there dreaming, with the ants running over her naked feet,
and with her brown curls lying in the sand, a Hottentot came up to her.
He was dressed in ragged yellow trousers, and a dirty shirt, and torn
jacket. He had a red handkerchief round his head, and a felt hat above
that. His nose was flat, his eyes like slits, and the wool on his head
was gathered into little round balls. He came to the milk-bush, and
looked at the little girl lying in the hot sun. Then he walked off, and
caught one of the fattest little Angora goats, and held its mouth fast,
as he stuck it under his arm. He looked back to see that she was still
sleeping, and jumped down into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed
of the sluit a little way and came to an overhanging bank, under which,
sitting on the red sand, were two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old
bushman, four feet high; the other was an English navvy, in a dark
blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat with the navvy's long knife, and
covered up the blood with sand, and buried the entrails and skin. Then
they talked, and quarrelled a little; and then they talked quietly
again.

The Hottentot man put a leg of the kid under his coat and left the rest