I was seated on the _stoep_ in the afternoon when I saw three white men and some Cape boys, their servants, riding up to the house.
“Here come those who would steal my boy from me,” I thought to myself, and, like Pharaoh, I hardened my heart.
Now in those days my sight was very good, and while the men were yet some way off I studied them all and made up my mind about them. First there was a large young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, and I noted with a sort of fear that he was not unlike to Ralph. The eyes were the same and the shape of the forehead, only this gentleman had a weak, uncertain mouth, and I judged that he was very good-humoured, but of an indolent mind. By his side rode another man of quite a different stamp, and middle-aged. “The lawyer,” I said to myself as I looked at his weasel-like face, bushy eyebrows, and red hair. Indeed, that was an easy guess, for who can mistake a lawyer, whatever his race may be? That trade is stronger than any blood, and leaves the same seal on all who follow it. Doubtless if those lawyers of whom the Lord speaks hard things in the Testament were set side by side with the lawyers who draw mortgage bonds and practise usury here in South Africa, they would prove to be as like to each other as are the grains of corn upon one mealie cob. Yes, when, all dressed the same, they stand together among the goats on the last day few indeed will know them apart.
“A fool and a knave,” said I to myself. “Well, perhaps I can deal with the knave and then the fool will not trouble me.”
As for the third man, I took no pains to study him, for I saw at once that he was nothing but an interpreter.
Well, up they rode to the _stoep_, the two Englishmen taking off their hats to me, after their foolish fashion, while the interpreter, who called me “Aunt,” although I was younger than he was, asked for leave to off-saddle, according to our custom. I nodded my head, and having given the horses to the Cape boys, they came up onto the _stoep_ and shook hands with me as I sat. I was not going to rise to greet two Englishmen whom I already hated in my heart, first because they _were_ Englishmen, and secondly because they were about to tempt me into sin, for such sooner or later we always learn to hate.