d finger! Lumme! you did give us a squeeze an' a' arf."

"If I shall to hurt you I been sorry, Miss!" apologized the Slabbert.

"All righto, Dutchy!" smiled Emigration Jane. "Don't tear your features."
She bestowed a glance of almost vocal disdain upon a Kaffir girl in
turkey-red cotton twill, with a green hat savagely pinned upon her woolly
hair. At another ebony female who advanced along the sidewalk pushing a
white baby in a perambulator she tossed her head. "Funny," she observed,
"when I was 'ome I used to swaller all the tales what parsons kep'
pitchin' about that black lot 'aving souls like me an' you. When I got out
'ere, an' took my fust place at Cape Town, an' 'eard the Missis and the
Master continual sayin', 'Don't do this or that, it ain't Englishwomen's
work; leave it to the Caffy,' or 'Call the 'Ottintot gal,' I felt quite
'urt for 'em. Upon me natural, I did! But when I knoo these blackies a bit
better, I didn't make no more bones. Monkeys, they are, rigged up in brown
'olland an' red braid, wot 'ave immytated 'uman beings till they've come
to talk langwidge wot we can understand, and tumble to our meanings. 'Ow
do you like me dress, Walty dear? An' me 'at? That chap what passed with
the red mustash said to 'is friend as I looked a bit of fair all right,
and no mistake. But I'd rather 'ear you say so nor 'im if you 'ad enough
English to do it with. Wot do I care about the perisher along of you?"

It was hard work to talk for two, and keep the ball of courtship rolling
after the approved fashion of Kentish Town, when the slouching young Boer
would only grunt in reply, or twinkle at her out of his piggish eyes. But
Emigration Jane had come out to South Africa, hearing that places at five
shillings a day were offered you by employers, literally upon their knees,
and that husbands were thick as orange-peel and programmes on the
pit-floor of the Britanniar Theayter, 'Oxton, or the Camden Varieties on
the morning after a Bank Holiday. She had left her first situation at Cape
Town, being a girl of spirit, because her mistress had neglected to
introduce her to eligible gentlemen acquaintances, as the pleasant-spoken
agent at the Emigrants' Information Office in Cheapside, the young
gentleman of Hebrew strain, whose dark eyes, waxed moustache, and diamond
tie-pin had made a deep impression upon the susceptible heart of his
client, had assured Jane the South African employer would take an early
opportunity of doing.