me as bride to the Slabberts roof. But all the same, her style,
which was that of the Alexandra Crescent, Kentish Town, London, N.W., and
her manners, which were easy, and her taste in dress, which was dazzling,
attracted him. As regards their spoken intercourse, it had been hampered
by the Slabbertian habit of pretending only a limited acquaintance with
the barbarous dialect of England. But a young man who conversed chiefly by
grunts, nudges, and signs was infinitely more welcome than no young man at
all, and Emigration Jane knew that the language of love is universal. She
had sent him a lovely letter in the Taal making this appointment, causing
his pachydermatous hide to know the needle-prick of curiosity. For only
last Sabbath she had spoken nothing but the English, and a young woman
capable of mastering Boer Dutch in a week might be made useful in a
variety of ways--some of them tortuous, all of them secret, as the
Slabbertian ways were wont to be.

He advanced to her, without the needless ceremony of touching his hat,
eagerly asking how she had acquired her new accomplishment?

But the brain crowned by the big red hat that had come from the Maison
Cluny, and cost a hundred francs, and had been smartened up with a bunch
of pink and yellow artificial roses, and three imitation ostrich-tips of a
cheerful blue, did not comprehend. Someone who spoke the Taal had written
for her. The bilingual young woman who was to be of such use to Walt had
only existed in his dreams. And yet--the disappointing creature was
exceeding fair.

"Pity you left your eyes be'ind you, Dutchy!" giggled Emigration Jane,
deliciously conscious that those rather muddy orbs were glued on her
admiringly.

The hair crowned by the screaming hat was waved and rolled over the
horsehair frame she had learned to call a "Pompydore"; the front locks,
usually confined in the iron cages called "curlers," frizzled wonderfully
about her moist, crimson face. She had on a "voylet" delaine skirt, with
three bias bands round the bottom, and a "blowse" of transparent muslin
stamped with floral devices. Her shoes were of white canvas; her stockings
pink and open-worked; her gloves were of white thread, and had grown grey
in the palms with agitation. One of them firmly grasped a crimson
"sunshyde," with green and scarlet cherries growing out of the end of the
stick.

The young Dopper warmly grasped the other, provoking a squeal from the
enchantress.

"Mind me ba