"We are not afraid; we will help ourselves!" she said. She stretched out
her hand and pressed it over them on the glass. "Dear eyes! we will never
be quite alone till they part us--till then!"


Chapter 2.X. Gregory Rose Has An Idea.

Gregory Rose was in the loft putting it neat. Outside the rain poured; a
six months' drought had broken, and the thirsty plain was drenched with
water. What it could not swallow ran off in mad rivulets to the great
sloot, that now foamed like an angry river across the flat. Even the
little furrow between the farmhouse and the kraals was now a stream, knee-
deep, which almost bore away the Kaffer women who crossed it. It had
rained for twenty-four hours, and still the rain poured on. The fowls had
collected--a melancholy crowd--in and about the wagon-house, and the
solitary gander, who alone had survived the six months' want of water,
walked hither and thither, printing his webbed footmarks on the mud, to
have them washed out the next instant by the pelting rain, which at eleven
o'clock still beat on the walls and roofs with unabated ardour.

Gregory, as he worked in the loft, took no notice of it beyond stuffing a
sack into the broken pane to keep it out; and, in spite of the pelt and
patter, Em's clear voice might be heard through the open trap-door from the
dining room, where she sat at work, singing the "Blue Water:"

"And take me away,
And take me away,
And take me away,
To the Blue Water"--