ternal veldt. The mountains in the background
were depressing, the wide-spreading Karroo plains more depressing still,
although, since the rain, they had taken on a beautiful carpeting of
flower-spangled green. She wanted to go away--to Port Elizabeth, or
Johannesburg; in both of which towns she had relatives; anywhere, it
didn't matter--anywhere for a change. Life was too deadly monotonous
for anything.

Well, life on a farm in the far Karroo is not precisely a state of
existence bristling with excitement, especially for the ornamental sex,
debarred both by conventionality and inclination from the pleasures of
the chase. But May was not really so hardly used as she chose to
imagine. She was frequently away from home visiting, but of late,
during almost the last year, she had not cared to go--had even refused
invitations--wherein her brother saw another exemplification of feminine
unreasonableness and caprice. Her mother, a woman and more worldly
wise, was not so sure on that head.

"What's the row, anyhow?" said Frank, bluntly. "What do you want to
scoot away for, and leave mother and me to entertain each other? Girls
are always so beastly selfish."

"Girls selfish? Men, you mean," she flashed back. "Men are the most
selfish creatures in existence. I hate them--hate them all."

"Why, only the other day you were saying that you had come round to the
idea that it was much jollier in the country, and that you hated towns,"
went on Frank. "You've said it over and over again, and now--"

"Oh, go away, Frank, can't you, and leave her alone," said his mother.
"Why do you take such a delight in teasing her when you see she's out of
sorts?"

"Out of sorts, eh? That's what women always say when they're in a
beastly bad temper. Oh, well, thank goodness I've no time for that sort
of thing." And cramming his pipe he went out.

Frank was right, if somewhat inconsiderate. May was in a bad temper--a
very bad temper indeed. Hardly had he gone than she flung on her white
_kapje_, the same we first saw her in, and which became her so well, and
went out too, but not after him. She went round among her fowl-houses,
then strolled along the quince hedges to see if any of the hens had been
laying out and in irregular places for the benefit of the egg-loving
_muishond_, or similar vermin, but her mind some how was not in it. She
gazed out over the surrounding veldt. A little cloud of dust away in
the distance caused