ready been exchanging greetings with the other girls, now
turned to this one.

"No, we haven't," she said. "How do you do, Miss De la Rey?" And as
the two clasped hands each was mentally reading the other.

"What a figure!" thought May to herself. "How easily and with what
unconscious grace she moves! I wish I had it instead of being fat and
dumpy"--which she wasn't--"and beautifully dressed, yet quite plainly.
Well, she isn't pretty, that's one thing. Oh no, she isn't in the least
pretty."

"So this is `the only English girl,'" Aletta was thinking. "She is
pretty. Yes, mother was right, she is very, very pretty. Those blue
eyes--like Table Bay when the sun shines on it at noon--I wish I had
them. And the gold of her hair, and her beautiful colouring. I do
believe old Tant' Plessis must be right. Frank, too, has improved since
I saw him. He has grown quite good-looking."

The said Frank, having shouted ineffectually for one of the boys,
presumably away on some other business, was helping Jan to outspan.

"Well, Jan," said Mrs Wenlock as they all went inside, "you have been a
long time bringing your sister over to see us."

"Andrina and I have only just got back ourselves, Mrs Wenlock," struck
in Condaas. "Aletta has had a lot to do at home. And we have had old
Tant' Plessis there and ever so many people."

"Ever so many people. Yes, I think you have had some people you would
have been better without, if report speaks true," replied Mrs Wenlock,
shaking a finger at the speaker with a good-humoured laugh. "There are
those who come a long way to breed sedition and discontent and
differences among folks who are quite happy and contented. We quite
thought you had deserted us nowadays because we were English."

Mrs Wenlock, you see, was one of those good souls who pride themselves
on speaking their minds--in this case an utterly tactless operation. A
momentary frost lay upon the whole party. But the situation was
relieved by the readiness of Aletta.

"Why, Mrs Wenlock, you are forgetting that there is some English blood
in us," she said.

"To be sure I was, child. And your father, although there is no English
in him, he is a man for whom I have the greatest regard. He is the last
man to listen to agitators and sedition-mongers--of that I am quite
sure. How is he, by the way, and your mother?" They reassured her as
to the perfect state of health and well-being enjoyed by both parents,
which h