African-built, and Europeans could
do the thing a bit better, couldn't they? This sort of thing
seems rather a wrong line of advance. If I hadn't seen Mabgwe so
lately I mightn't mind so much.'

They showed us to a hut, a very clean one. 'That's better; that's
ever so much better,' he said. On the wall was a rude frieze in
Bushman painting style, but white, not red. I enlightened him as
to tsenza work, as to how you could use the cool watery roots
like crayons.

'Why, that's surely Jezebel looking out of that grain-bin,' he
hazarded. 'But what are those?'

'The dogs to eat her,' I answered.

They were horrid little whelps with human heads. I told him about
certain night-fears common among natives. 'It was a solid
Christian who dared to paint these,' I surmised.

'If you could only get Africans to believe what Christians
believed in the thirteenth century you might see signs and
wonders yet,' he said.

He has not been our way again since April, but I met him at the
Pro-Cathedral Pageant in January. It was organized by a Pageant
Master, our mutual friend the dignitary. Therein Asia, King
Solomon and Sheba's Queen, were represented. Africa was relegated
to her proper Cinderella and Plantation Chorus part. 'Poor
creatures!' Spenser said, with a grimace, and winked at me.

'Come, and I will show you a thing,' he said to me afterwards; 'a
thing I chanced on in the Christmas holidays. It's ten miles out.
I want to inspan at six sharp to-morrow.'

I was guilty of three omissions next day. I cut a clerical
meeting; I flouted the True Romance in the shape of the Pageant's
second performance; I also missed the bazaar of St. Uriel's
Native Church that was held on the Pageant ground. St. Uriel's
structure had been put out to European contract; it was a very
didactic building, so the Pageant-Master told us. We passed it on
our way out to the kopje country.

'About as sensuously lovely as a Pills' advertisement,' was
Spenser's comment. 'A good pity and terror purge.'

I sighed indulgently.

'It's very popular, I've heard, among the town boys. It's so very
European to native eyes, so extra corrugated and angular.'

We came up at last to that which we sought a huge ellipse and
dome of stones and earth, rising and broadening under our very
eyes. It was on a farm among the granite hills, many miles from
Rosebery. 'It's only a glorified stone cattle-byre, and an
intensified stone Kaffir hut,' Spenser commented. 'It's not