ous lot, all debts and gold
stripe"--(the reader must bear in mind that racial animus was at its
highest tension, and that the speaker was a Transvaal official). "You
should see them a few years later, as I have seen them, with very little
half-pay and very large family, living cheap at some wretched Belgian
town. Still--an Englishman!"

"But there are Englishmen and Englishmen, Cousin Piet," returned Aletta,
laughing as one could afford to do who was supremely conscious that the
laugh was all on her own side. "Wait till you see this one. He is not
in the least like the rest."

"Oh no. Of course not. How could he be, if your choice has fallen upon
him? Well, well. We thought we could have done much better for you up
here, but you have taken the bit between your teeth so there's an end of
it. Is he coming up here, then?"

"Yes, in a day or two. He came with me as far as Bloemfontein--wouldn't
come all the way yet--thought I had better have a little while alone
with you and Anna, so that we might get sort of acquainted. You see, we
hardly know each other yet."

"Why, I feel that we rather do already, Aletta," replied her kinsman
heartily, for he was charmed with her taking manner and general
appearance. He had expected her to prove presentable, if a bit shy.
But there was nothing of the latter about her. What an acquisition she
would be to that unpretentious but pretty house of his just outside
Pretoria!

And in it Aletta was destined to pass some very happy days. To begin
with, the capital of the principal Dutch Republic stood to her as a kind
of Mecca, viewed in the light of her former lofty ideals; to others, of
course, it was just a pretty, leafy little town, nestling between its
surrounding hills. Brother officials of Piet's would often come to the
house--men who hitherto had been but names to her; genial, highly
cultured gentlemen, differing pole-wide from the black-browed conspiring
Guy Fawkes--such as the Colonial papers had delighted in painting them.
Uitlanders too, with a grievance of course, would frequently show up:
jolly, jovial, well-to-do looking, grievance and all; and at first it
fairly puzzled her to note on what excellent terms they appeared to
stand with their theoretical tyrants and oppressors. Sometimes, too,
she got more than a passing glimpse of the President himself. Here
again she failed to identify the perfidious ogre she had so often seen
portrayed, both in type and penc