ascinating
Englishman, who knew everything, and did everything--from shooting an
elephant to inspanning an ox--better even than her father and brothers,
and could teach her own mother how to cook. She loved to watch him as
he saddled up in the early dawning and rode off across the plains, or
into the bush veldt, with her father and brothers in search of game.
How nimble was this Englishman, and how graceful! With what an air he
sprang into his saddle, and sat his horse, and even carried his rifle!
And how fresh and trim and clean the man always looked! I am afraid
Jacoba began secretly to contrast the captain with her own heavy,
untrimmed and not over-clean kindred--much to the detriment of the
latter.

In a little while the girl had come to look forward to Meredith's return
from hunting as the one great pleasure in the long day. Sometimes, when
the men were in pursuit of elephants, and slept out on the spoor, it
seemed as if the slothful hours would never pass. Her mother noticed
the change in Jacoba's demeanour, and would sometimes rate her for her
forgetfulness and absent ways. "Jacoba," she would say, from her low
chair under the shady lee of the wagon, "your mind is always running on
that English `Kaptein.' Wake up, child, and think what you are doing,
or I shall send him packing."

Yet it must be confessed that the big ponderous _vrouw_ was, in truth,
almost as taken with the stranger as her own child. She liked, as every
one else in the camp liked, his pleasant, hearty ways, and the air of
novelty and briskness that his presence brought into the dull lives of
herself and her folk. She liked his friendship for her child most of
all, stout anti-Briton though she was in the abstract. It would be a
fine thing indeed, she whispered to herself, if the captain should ask
the girl in marriage, and set her up as a great lady. Vrouw Steyn had
very faint ideas of what great ladies did, and how they comported
themselves; yet as a child she remembered seeing the wife of the
Governor of the Cape, and other official dames, at Graaff Reinet. And
besides, she had once or twice seen old copies of the _Illustrated
London News_, from which she assisted her own misty and fantastic
glimmerings upon the subject.

It was curious to note in these days how particular Jacoba had grown
about her clothes and person. It would be hard to say how she managed
it. She had but two print gowns, and yet now she always appeared in a