not be long behind him. Ah! they may talk, all these wise young people;
but, after all, what is there better for a woman than to love some man,
the good and the bad of him together, to bear his children and to share
his sorrows, and to try to make him a little better and a little less
selfish and unfortunate than he would have been alone? Poor men! Without
us women their lot would be hard indeed, and how they will get on in
heaven, where they are not allowed to marry, is more than I can guess.

So we married, and within a year our daughter was born and christened by
the family name of Suzanne after me, though almost from her cradle
the Kaffirs called her "Swallow," I am not sure why. She was a very
beautiful child from the first, and she was the only one, for I was ill
at her birth and never had any more children. The other women with their
coveys of eight and ten and twelve used to condole with me about this,
and get a sharp answer for their pains. I had one which always shut
their mouths, but I won't ask the girl here to set it down. An only
daughter was enough for me, I said, and if it wasn't I shouldn't have
told them so, for the truth is that it is best to take these things as
we find them, and whether it be one or ten, to declare that that is just
as we would wish it. I know that when we were on the great trek and I
saw the _kinderchies_ of others dying of starvation, or massacred in
dozens by the Kaffir devils, ah! then I was glad that we had no more
children. Heartaches enough my ewe lamb Suzanne gave me during those
bitter years when she was lost. And when she died, having lived out her
life just before her husband, Ralph Kenzie, went on commando with his
son to the Zulu war, whither her death drove him, ah! then it ached for
the last time. When next my heart aches it shall be with joy to find
them both in Heaven.