had offered to board this child. So kind,
wasn't it? She was of sturdy English make (her father's father
was an Essex man. I had been told). Her hair and eyes were very
dark; she looked ever so capable.

'Yes, very kind,' I murmured, but I was reflecting that the
lady's kindness might not be so very ill-rewarded. The child
might prove useful and cost little. She might give the sort of
help that is apt to be useful and costly in a country like ours.
'Yes,' said the father smiling, 'and she may get to the day
school that way, the lady says. We couldn't have nearly afforded
to send her into town otherwise. But now she's got her chance of
a regular school.' 'Oh, really,' said my friend. His kind ugly
face looked none too pleasant as he said it, I remember noticing
that.

Then he went to his mules to 'buckle' up a strap somewhere. I was
surprised to hear him cursing something under his breath. It was
not his manner, I thought, to curse straps or mules. We said
good-bye a very cordial one and then drove down towards the main
road. It winds through a vlei towards the town. We had got almost
to the big water-course so banked up in thirsty sand, when he
told me what he was cursing. He repeated his words deliberately:
'Damn it, damn it to hell,' he said. I protested faintly till he
made it clear to me what he was damning, then I recklessly
endorsed his damnation. For he was not cursing Heaven or
humanity; he was cursing that blessed Anglo-Dutch, or rather
Dutch-English, institution of South Africa, the color-bar. He had
been told by one of the managers that should the father apply for
admission to school on behalf of the child we had seen, he would
be certainly refused. The father was really much too poor to send
her away, he told me.

'They're ever so honest and hard-worked. They've put up a great
fight on mealie meal against bad seasons. They've pinched hard
for the child's poor little outfit. He's got into debt for it.
He's a Britisher, and has got two brothers fighting. Very
dubious, dark children have been admitted already, as presumably
Dutch. Dutch and colonials rule the roost here. And to leave
Christianity alone, where does British Imperialism come in? It's
risking spoiling a life, and the life of such a decent kid.'

Thereat he certainly condemned guiltily, as he should not have
condemned, Dutchmen and colonials, their churches, their social
order, and their sanctimony. 'Thank God I was at plebeian
Oxford,' he