ny with a crowd of
wives, at the prison gates, under a broiling sun. All were loaded down
with offerings.

Betty's own donation was several green-lined umbrellas (a god-send in
a whitewashed court beat upon by a tropical sun). After being admitted
each lady was taken into a private room and 'felt all over by a Boer
woman,' who was so fat, Betty declares, 'she must have grown up in
the room, as she could not possibly have got through the door, even
sideways.'

In the prison court the prisoners were sitting about in great
diversity of costume, pyjamas predominating. The weather was
suffocatingly hot. To while away the tedious time some were playing
marbles, others reading, and a few of the most active brains on the
Rand were caught dozing at midday, in a strip of shadow the width of
one's hand, the sole shade in the whole enclosure. Colonel Bettington
sat on a bench near the entrance in a peculiar and striking costume
which proved to be, to those who had courage to linger and analyse,
pyjama drawers rolled to the knees, a crash towel draped with happy
blending of coolness and perfect propriety around body, noble Bedouin
arrangement of wet crash towel on head, single eyeglass in eye, merry
smile. Mr. Lace was the only one of the company who could suddenly
have been set down in Piccadilly without confusion to himself and
beholders. He wore a neat brown suit, pale pink shirt, and a
_stylish_ straw sailor hat. The prisoners showed a touching interest,
Betty says, in the distribution of their gifts. One husband asked his
wife almost before she was within arm's length what she had brought
him. She had brought him a box of Pasta Mack tabloids, and
unfortunately there was not at that time a bath in the whole prison.
Another gentleman was presented with a Cologne spray. He was the envy
of the jail; within twenty-four hours every Cologne spray in Pretoria
was bought up and in the possession of the Reform Committee.

The four leaders are kept apart. After much ceremony my husband was
allowed to see his sister at the door of the inner court where they
are housed. Jameson and his men are in a tiny cottage by themselves,
and no communication whatever is allowed between the prisoners.
Arrangements have been made with the authorities to allow food to be
served to the Reformers from the Pretoria Club at the prisoners'
expense. The head jailer, Du Plessis, is a cousin of Kruger's. A
ponderous man with a wild beard, a blood-shot eye, an