Snow it must be a gentleman; I
don't care much about the money, I'll take a thousand for a third share
if I can get a gentleman--none of your Boers or mean whites for me. I
tell you I have had enough of Boers and their ways; the best day of my
life was when old Shepstone ran up the Union Jack there in Pretoria and
I could call myself an Englishman once more. Lord! and to think that
there are men who are subjects of the Queen and want to be subjects of
a Republic again--Mad! Captain Niel, I tell you, quite mad! However,
there's an end of it all now. You know what Sir Garnet Wolseley told
them in the name of the Queen up at the Vaal River, that this country
would remain English until the sun stood still in the heavens and the
waters of the Vaal ran backwards.[*] That's good enough for me, for, as
I tell these grumbling fellows who want the land back now that we have
paid their debts and defeated their enemies, no English government is
false to its word, or breaks engagements solemnly entered into by its
representatives. We leave that sort of thing to foreigners. No, no,
Captain Niel, I would not ask you to take a share in this place if I
wasn't sure that it would remain under the British flag. But we will
talk of all this another time, and now come in to breakfast."

[*] A fact.--Author.

After breakfast, as John was far too lame to walk about the farm, the
fair Bessie suggested that he should come and help her to wash a batch
of ostrich feathers, and, accordingly, off he went. The _locus operandi_
was in a space of lawn at the rear of a little clump of _naatche_
orange-trees, of which the fruit is like that of the Maltese orange,
only larger. Here were placed an ordinary washing-tub half-filled with
warm water, and a tin bath full of cold. The ostrich feathers, many of
which were completely coated with red dirt, were plunged first into the
tub of warm water, where John Niel scrubbed them with soap, and then
transferred to the tin bath, where Bessie rinsed them and laid them on
a sheet in the sun to dry. The morning was very pleasant, and John soon
came to the conclusion that there are many more disagreeable occupations
in the world than the washing of ostrich feathers with a lovely girl to
help you. For there was no doubt but that Bessie was lovely, looking a
very type of happy, healthy womanhood as she sat opposite to him on the
little stool, her sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulder, showing
a pair of arms that wou