, surely your Africander spy has informed
you?"

_I. O._ "If you mean the Tiger, he has told me nothing!"

_Miss P._ "And may I also ask something,--What authority have you to
put me such a question? At the institution which prided itself in
teaching me--an Africander girl--the manners and customs of the
English, they were emphatic upon the impertinence of asking personal
questions."

_I. O._ "I must apologise, Miss Pretorius. But the circumstances are
hardly normal. We cannot get away from the fact that we are influenced
against our better natures by an unfortunate state of war."

_Miss P._ (_petulantly_) "Oh, the war! That is just like you
Englishmen--you paragons of manly virtue--you make the war a cloak for
all your sins. It is such an upright war, therefore in its furtherance
you can do no wrong--cannot even be unmannerly. It is this that has
made you so beloved in the Republics; but how does your attitude hold
good with me? I am a loyal British subject, living at peace with all
men in a British colony. What right, therefore, have you to catechise
me as to my goings and comings? I do not even live within the
legitimate area of your so-called just war. I am only exposed to its
rigours--that is, as far as the insolence of those who should be our
defenders affects us women--because you English, in spite of your
vaunted power and military magnitude, cannot defend us, your
Africander dependants, from a few simple farmers. Where is your
manhood, where the courtly bearing of the Englishman, of which I have
heard so much--and seen so little?"

_I. O._ "Really, Miss Pretorius, if I may say so, I think that you
exaggerate the case. Unfortunately we are at war. You claim
consideration on the score of loyalty. Are you astonished that I
should have mistaken your attitude towards us? Your two brothers only
yesterday were in arms against us. One is wounded, the other a
prisoner in our hands. Is it surprising that I regarded you as their
accomplice in rebellion?"

_Miss P._ "I am surprised at nothing that an Englishman may do. But
why should I be compromised because my brothers have taken up arms
against you. Am I not of an age to formulate opinions of my own? or is
it that you consider that we poor Africander girls have no
intelligence, that our opinions must of necessity be bound up in those
of our men-folk, that we have no mind above the duties of the drudging
_hausfrau_? No, sir; I am an Africander loyalist--more loyal