ts
it short and it sticks up like that on a cat's back. Iya!" (i.e.
Piff!), and she moved her hand contemptuously, "a feather of a man. But
white--white, one of those who rule. Why, they all of them know that he
is their master. They call him 'He-who-never-Sleeps.' They say that he
has the courage of a lioness with young--he who got away when Dingaan
killed Piti [Retief] and the Boers; they say that he is quick and
cunning as a snake, and that Panda and his great indunas think more of
him than of any white man they know. He is unmarried also, though they
say, too, that twice he had a wife, who died, and now he does not turn
to look at women, which is strange in any man, and shows that he will
escape trouble and succeed. Still, it must be remembered that they are
all ugly down here in Zululand, cows, or heifers who will be cows. Piff!
no more."

She paused for a little while, then went on in her dreamy, reflective
voice:

"Now, if he met a woman who is not merely a cow or a heifer, a woman
cleverer than himself, even if she were not white, I wonder--"

At this point I thought it well to wake up. Turning my head I yawned,
opened my eyes and looked at her vaguely, seeing which her expression
changed in a flash from that of brooding power to one of moved and
anxious girlhood; in short, it became most sweetly feminine.

"You are Mameena?" I said; "is it not so?"

"Oh, yes, Inkoosi," she answered, "that is my poor name. But how did you
hear it, and how do you know me?"

"I heard it from one Saduko"--here she frowned a little--"and others,
and I knew you because you are so beautiful"--an incautious speech at
which she broke into a dazzling smile and tossed her deer-like head.

"Am I?" she asked. "I never knew it, who am only a common Zulu girl to
whom it pleases the great white chief to say kind things, for which I
thank him"; and she made a graceful little reverence, just bending
one knee. "But," she went on quickly, "whatever else I be, I am of no
knowledge, not fit to tend you who are hurt. Shall I go and send my
oldest mother?"

"Do you mean her whom your father calls the 'Worn-out-old-Cow,' and
whose ear he shot off?"

"Yes, it must be she from the description," she answered with a little
shake of laughter, "though I never heard him give her that name."

"Or if you did, you have forgotten it," I said dryly. "Well, I think
not, thank you. Why trouble her, when you will do quite as well? If
there is milk in tha