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"Wat scheelt er aan, Tante?" He spoke the Taal with ease. The large Tante snorted: "What is the matter? Do you ask me what is the matter? As if a dokter oughtn't to tell me that! But the Engelsch are regular devils for asking questions. Since you must know, I have a mighty wallowing under my apron-band, and therewith a pain. How is it begun? It is begun since middageten yesterday.
Lady Hannah wondered, while the stuffy room spun round her, who the others were. "Geen, I will tell you what he does." He pitched the crumpled transformation contemptuously into the corner. "He writes to the Engelsch Commandant at Gueldersdorp and says: 'I have here a silly female thing that is no use to me. Take her you, and give me in exchange a man of mine. ..."
It gives a spirited description of the prudent retreat of General Huysmans, the unconditional surrender of Commandant Eybel, and winds up with a pen-and-ink sketch of Brounckers' bright boy breaking the chaff-bread of captivity in the quarters of that slim duyvel, the Engelsch Commandant.
Moreover, Eybel, who is a bright boy, and has a head upon his shoulders, wants a slim rogue of a fellow that talks Engelsch to worm himself in over yonder" he jerked his gnarled thumb in the direction of Gueldersdorp "and bring back a plan of the defences on the west, where the native stad lies.
"What the green reim does teach them," explained Lady Hannah, secretly aghast at her own temerity, "is, not to be found out next time." He gave a wooden chuckle, but his regard was as menacing and his voice as gruff as ever. "I make no mouth-play with words. I talk in men and guns, and there are half a dozen among the Engelsch, niet mier, that know how to talk back.
There are one or two others that are duyvels, and not men. And the worst duyvel of all" he waved the big hand westward "is he over there at Gueldersdorp." She mentally registered the compliment. "You are a woman who writes for the Engelsch newspapers that are full of shameless tales about the Boers." He spat copiously upon the floor, and the big voice became a bellow. "Lies, lies!
He had meant to wait yet another day, and take many things more, but the coming of those verdoemte soldiers of the Engelsch Commandant to fetch away the carboys of carbolic acid and the other medical stores had roused him to prompt action.
She gurgled enjoyingly. "Tell me again, before you shall go, about the Engelsch Commandant who came to visit at the Convent to-day?" "Lor! 'Aven't I told you a'ready? 'E stopped 'arf an 'our or more ... an' She that's the Reverend Mother, as they call her She took 'im over the 'ouse, an' after 'e'd gone through the 'ouse, an' Sister Tobias ain't that a rummy name for a nun?
Her grateful heart overflowed to this friendly patronage. She showed the bar-keeper her gathered finger, and said it did 'urt a treat. She expected it would 'urt worse before Dr. de Boursy-Williams "'adn't 'e got a toff's name?" 'ad done with it. "You go to that Engelsch doktor on Harris Street, eh?" said the bar-keeper, spitting dexterously.
Alamachtig! who knows what he has not got that Engelsch Commandant both in the dorp and hidden in those thrice-accursed mines that he has laid on the veld about her. Prismatic powder and gun-cotton, dynamite and cordite enough to blow a dozen commandos of honest Booren into dust a small, fine dust of bones and flesh that shall afterwards fall mingled with rain of blood.
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