The reality had not corresponded with the glowing
picture. The employer had failed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had not
appeared. Ephemeral flirtations there had been, with a postman, with a
trooper of the Cape Mounted Police, with an American bar-tender. But not
one of these had breathed of indissoluble union, though each had wanted to
borrow her savings. And Emigration Jane had "bin 'ad" in that way before,
and gone with her bleeding heart and depleted Post Office Savings-book
before the fat, sallow magistrate at the Regent's Road County Court, and
winced and smarted under his brutal waggeries, only to learn that the
appropriator of her womanly affections and her fifteen sovereigns had
already three wives.

The brute, the 'artless beast! Emigration Jane wondered at herself, she
did, as 'ad bin such a reg'ler soft as to be took in by one to whom she
never referred in speech except as "That There Green." That she softened
to him in her weaker moments, in spite of his remembered appetite for
savings and his regrettable multiplicity of wives, gave her the fair hump.
That something in the expression of this new one's muddy eyes recalled the
loving leer of "That There Green," she admitted to herself. Womanly
anxiety throbbed in the bosom, not too coyly hidden by the pneumonia
blouse, as the couple passed the gilded portals of a public bar, and the
Slabberts' elbow was thrust painfully into her side, as its owner said
heavily:

"Have you thirst?"

She coyly owned to aridity, and they entered the saloon, kept by a
Dutchman who spoke English. Two ginger-beers with a stick of Hollands were
supplied, and the stick of Slabberts was as the rod of Moses to the other
stick for strength and power. But as Emigration Jane daintily sipped the
cooling beverage, giggling at the soapy bubbles that snapped at her nose,
the restless worm of anxiety kept on gnawing under the flowery "blowse."
Too well did she know the ways of young men who hospitably ask you if
you're thirsty, and 'ave you in, whether or no, and order drinks as
liberal as lords, and then discover that they're short of the bob, and
borrow from you in a joking way.... Her heart bounded as the Slabberts put
his hand in his pocket, saying:

"Wat kost het?"

The Dutch bar-keeper, who seemed to know Slabberts, answered in English,
looking at Emigration Jane:

"Half a dollar."

Half a dollar is South African for eighteenpence. Slabberts rattled
something metallic in his