lish from Jim and in Dutch from
Paulus, when necessity compelled them to address one another, for Jim
could speak no Sesuto and Paulus knew neither Zulu nor English.

Their antipathy to one another was so marked, in fact, that "Gentleman
Jim" refused to have his meals with Paulus and had built a small
kitchen apart for himself, under one of the big willows. On this
occasion Hansie did not feel pleased at "Jim's" appearance either, for
it was one thing to teach the self-contained and reverent Sesuto, and
quite another to instruct the flippant "Gentleman Jim."

But Hansie did not know what to say and asked Jim to let her hear him
read. He began laboriously, floundering hopelessly over the long
words.

"Fruits, meat _and_ repentance,"[3] he read with painful uncertainty,
when Hansie interrupted him with a laugh:

"That will do, Jim; you are wonderful, and you need not come again."

* * * * *

Other natives on the premises were of the shiftless, wandering type,
changing hands continually, and many were the instances of their
simplicity, not to say rank stupidity.

On one occasion a "raw" Kaffir, on being ordered to take a heavily
laden wheelbarrow from one part of the garden to the other, was found
half an hour later, still in the same place, vainly trying to place
the wheelbarrow on his head!

I believe it was the same native who, when told to empty the contents
of a waste-paper basket on a burning heap of rubbish in the garden,
returned without the basket, and when asked what he had done with it,
pointed, with an air of injured surprise, to its smouldering remains
on the heap of rubbish.

Indeed, the patience of the housewife was often sorely tried. A
relative of Mrs. van Warmelo's coming into the kitchen one morning,
found one of these new "hands" before the stove in a sea of hot water,
desperately trying to fill a small kettle _by the spout_, from a large
one!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Myn en dyn.]

[Footnote 3: "Fruits meet for repentance."]

CHAPTER XXII

THE SECRET RAILWAY TIME-TABLE

Thank God for the early rains!

After the long winter months, dry and dusty, terrific storms pass over
the country, torrents of rain, lashing hailstones. The beautiful world
is washed clean, and everywhere the moist brown earth gives promise of
a plentiful supply of fresh young grass, which means food for the
weary underfed horses on commando, and new life, new hopes to the me