t that leaves Wakkerstroom
to-morrow afternoon, and to stop for a couple of months with my
schoolfellow, Jane Neville. I have often promised to go, and I have
never gone."

"Well, I never!" said the old man. "My stay-at-home Jess wanting to go
away, and without Bessie too! What is the matter with you?"

"I want a change, uncle--I do indeed. I hope you won't thwart me in
this."

Silas looked at her steadily with his keen grey eyes.

"Humph!" he said; "you want to go away, and there's an end of it. Best
not ask too many questions where a maid is concerned. Very well, my
dear, go if you like, though I shall miss you."

"Thank you, uncle," she said, and kissed him; then turned and went.

Old Croft took off his broad hat and polished his bald head with a red
pocket-handkerchief.

"There's something up with that girl," he said aloud to a lizard that
had crept out of the crevices of the stone wall to bask in the sun. "I
am not such a fool as I look, and I say that there is something wrong
with her. She is odder than ever," and he hit viciously at the lizard
with his stick, whereon it promptly bolted into its crack, returning
presently to see if the irate "human" had departed.

"However," he soliloquised, as he made his way to the house, "I am glad
that it was not Bessie. I couldn't bear, at my time of life, to part
with Bessie, even for a couple of months."

CHAPTER VIII

JESS GOES TO PRETORIA

That day, at dinner, Jess suddenly announced that she was going on the
morrow to Pretoria to see Jane Neville.

"To see Jane Neville!" said Bessie, opening her blue eyes wide. "Why,
it was only last month you said that you did not care about Jane Neville
now, because she had grown so vulgar. Don't you remember when she
stopped here on her way down to Natal last year, and held up her fat
hands, and said, 'Ah, Jess--Jess is a _genius!_ It is a privilege to
know her'? And then she asked you to quote Shakespeare to that lump of
a brother of hers, and you told her that if she did not hold her tongue
she would not enjoy the privilege much longer. And now you want to go
and stop with her for two months! Well, Jess, you are odd. And, what's
more, I think it is very unkind of you to run away for so long."

To all of which prattle Jess said nothing, but merely reiterated her
determination to go.

John, too, was astonished, and, to tell the truth, not a little
disgusted. Since the previous day, when he had that talk with her