"Ah, no," said her companion. "I suppose some day we shall go somewhere;
but now we are only twelve, and we cannot marry till we are seventeen.
Four years, five--that is a long time to wait. And we might not have
diamonds if we did marry."

"And you think that I am going to stay here till then?"

"Well, where are you going?" asked her companion.

The girl crushed an ice-plant leaf between her fingers.

"Tant Sannie is a miserable old woman," she said. "Your father married her
when he was dying, because he thought she would take better care of the
farm, and of us, than an English woman. He said we should be taught and
sent to school. Now she saves every farthing for herself, buys us not even
one old book. She does not ill-use us--why? Because she is afraid of your
father's ghost. Only this morning she told her Hottentot that she would
have beaten you for breaking the plate, but that three nights ago she heard
a rustling and a grunting behind the pantry door, and knew it was your
father coming to spook her. She is a miserable old woman," said the girl,
throwing the leaf from her; "but I intend to go to school."

"And if she won't let you?"

"I shall make her."

"How?"

The child took not the slightest notice of the last question, and folded
her small arms across her knees.