corner, now sideways. "How long did you say you had been engaged,
Aletta?"

"Just over two months," answered the girl, her eyes brightening.

"_Ach_! he isn't listening to you at all, Aletta," struck in the partner
of Piet's joys and sorrows, looking up from her book. "He has forgotten
all about Mr Kershaw by this time, and is thinking over the last
political move. What did you say his name was--Mr Kershaw's, I mean?"

"Colvin. It's a family surname turned into a Christian name. Oh, and
such a joke, Anna! You should have heard Tant' Plessis on that very
thing," And she proceeded to narrate how that perverse old relative had
insisted on saddling upon her _fiance_ a historic Protestant Reformer of
the sixteenth-century for grandfather. Piet fairly shouted with mirth.

"Old Tant' Katrina! _Ja_, she was a _kwaai vrouw_!" he cried. "I have
good reason to remember her. When we were young ones, at Rondavel, the
other side Heilbron, she would come and stop there for any time. She
was always saying we didn't get enough _strop_ and worrying the _Ou'
Baas_ to give us more. He only laughed at her--and one day she wanted
to give us some herself. But we wouldn't take it. We snatched the
_strop_ from her and ran away. But we had to spend a week dodging her.
She had got a broomstick then. She shied it at us one day, and hit my
brother Sarel--the one that is in Bremersdorp now--over the leg. He
couldn't walk straight for about six months after. Then she and the
_Ou' Baas_ had words, and she cleared out _Ja_, she _was_ a _kwaai
vrouw_. And now she is with Stephanus! Well, well. But Aletta, what
did she say to your being engaged to an Englishman?"

"Oh, she consoled herself that his grandfather was the great Calvinus,"
answered Aletta, breaking into a peal of laughter over the recollection.
"Mynheer had said so: that was enough for her."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few days after this Colvin arrived in person, and then it seemed to
Aletta that she had nothing left to wish for. But he would not allow
her to give him all her time exclusively. She had certain social calls
upon it, and, in justice to her entertainers, these must not be set
aside. Piet Plessis had been the first to notice this, and was capable
of appreciating it, for he himself was astonished at the brightening
effect the presence of Aletta had shed within his home.

"Did I not tell you," she wou