is sweet enough and lovely enough to be looked after for her own sake, I
should think."

Before he could say any more, in came Bessie herself, saying that the
driver was waiting, and they went out to see her sister off.

"Don't forget your promise," Jess whispered to him, bending down as he
helped her into the cart, so low that her lips almost touched him, and
her breath rested for a second on his cheek like the ghost of a kiss.

In another moment the sisters had embraced each other, tenderly enough;
the driver had sounded once more on his awful bugle, and away went the
cart at full gallop, bearing with it Jess, two other passengers, and
her Majesty's mails. John and Bessie stood for a moment watching its
mad career, as it fled splashing and banging down the straggling street
towards the wide plains beyond; then they turned to enter the inn again
and prepare for their homeward drive. At that moment, an old Boer, named
Hans Coetzee, with whom John was already slightly acquainted, came
up, and, extending an enormously big and thick hand, bid them "_Gooden
daag._" Hans Coetzee was a very favourable specimen of the better sort
of Boer, and really came more or less up to the ideal picture that is so
often drawn of that "simple pastoral people." He was a very large, stout
man, with a fine open face and a pair of kindly eyes. John, looking at
him, guessed that he could not weigh less than seventeen stone, and that
estimate was well within the mark.

"How are you, Captain?" he said in English, for he could talk English
well, "and how do you like the Transvaal?--must not call it South
African Republic now, you know, for that's treason," and his eye
twinkled merrily.