As I wrote on Saturday, we still stand aside and look upon your charms of peaceful domesticity, all garlanded for your bridegroom. Still, too, we see your selfish, scheming guardian of the past fleeing from the wreck and ruin into which he has plunged your people. And we see your sworn champions in similar flight, leaving you forlorn, deserted. It is eminently womanly of you to defend these faithless gallants rather than solicit pity for yourself. It is the true maidenhood in you which makes you retire to your bower until you have forced us to acknowledge your value and earn your love. If we misjudged you and fancied you had tripped out to put your hand in ours, it was only because we were so eager and so smitten. We like you better as you are, shy and modest, proud and pure.
That deft touch of your pen upon the quality of our music--it was--I mean to say we find no fault in you for--but, no, we may not be disloyal, even to our pipes. It was the best we had to offer, and when better comes from home we fancy that even you will cease to barricade your pearly ears against it. We shall enjoy hearing Pan set your sighs to melody. We promise not to drive him away; he shall ever play your songs just as he trills the lays of ever so many fair maidens who throng around our Queen, and who remember the chains she has stricken from their limbs without for an instant forgetting the traditions which still knit each to her past and her kindred in so many far lands.
You speak of the "great honour" of our liking you. You extol our bravery. You admit our "tender mercies" and our love of order. You say you will not forget our courtesy to your people or our modesty. You call us "the politest of polite men"--ah, dear little Afrikander, we treasure each word in each of those sentences. We cannot help taking heart of hope. If you can speak of us so fair to-day, when the whispers of your old lover still sound in your ears, what may we not expect in time to come? We will not try to hurry your heart, but we warn you we shall melt it. For we love you, and there is no selfish prompting, no hope of mercenary gain in our affection. We love you because you are irresistible, even with your dimpled little hand clenched, and, perhaps, partly because of the lightning that flashes in your pretty eyes.