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Here Piet's black hat appeared in the doorway, and the Boer-woman drew herself up in dignified silence, extended the tips of her fingers, and motioned solemnly to a chair. The young man seated himself, sticking his feet as far under it as they would go, and said mildly: "I am Little Piet Vander Walt, and my father is Big Piet Vander Walt." Tant Sannie said solemnly: "Yes."
At length, turning to the Boer-woman, he said, in a voice of deep emotion: "You will, I trust, dear madam, excuse this exhibition of my feelings; but this this little picture recalls to me my first and best beloved, my dear departed wife, who is now a saint in heaven."
Ever and anon the newcomer cast a glance over his pendulous red nose to the spot where the Boer-woman stood, and smiled faintly. "I'm not a child," cried the Boer-woman, in low Cape Dutch, "and I wasn't born yesterday. No, by the Lord, no! You can't take me in! My mother didn't wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye and I see the whole thing.
"Depend upon it you'll get the itch, or some other disease; the blessing of the Lord'll never rest upon it," said the Boer-woman. Then suddenly she broke forth. "And she eighty-two, and goats, and rams, and eight thousand morgen, and the rams real angora, and two thousand sheep, and a short-horn bull," said Tant Sannie, standing upright and planting a hand on each hip.
The Boer-woman, seen by daylight, was even less lovely than when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was damned.
Paid a Kaffer nine pounds to go in and look for it at the risk of his life couldn't find it." The German would have translated this information, but the Boer-woman gave no ear. "No, no; he goes tonight. See how he looks at me a poor unprotected female! If he wrongs me, who is to do me right?" cried Tant Sannie.
I will go after him!" cried the Boer-woman, as Bonaparte Blenkins wildly fled into the fields. Late in the evening of the same day Waldo knelt on the floor of his cabin. He bathed the foot of his dog which had been pierced by a thorn. The bruises on his own back had had five days to heal in, and, except a little stiffness in his movements, there was nothing remarkable about the boy.
But I should have run away from the place on the fourth day, and hired myself to the first Boer-woman whose farm I came to, to make fire under her soap-pot, if I had to live as the rest of the drove did.
He turned slowly away and walked down the little path to his cabin, with his shoulders bent; it was all dark before him. He stumbled over the threshold of his own well-known door. Em, sobbing bitterly, would have followed him; but the Boer-woman prevented her by a flood of speech which convulsed the Hottentot, so low were its images.
So Bonaparte looked up, and in the name of all that was tantalizing, questioned what the boy did up there. The loft was used only as a lumber-room. What could the fellow find up there to keep him so long? Could the Boer-woman have beheld Waldo at that instant, any lingering doubt which might have remained in her mind as to the boy's insanity would instantly have vanished.
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