“I do not know which things you refer to. If you will enlighten me I am quite prepared to speak of them,” she said, reading as she spoke.
“Oh, you never used to ask Waldo like that,” said Gregory, in a more sorely aggrieved tone than ever. “You used just to begin.”
“Well, let me see,” she said, closing her book and folding her hands on it. “There at the foot of the kopje goes a Kaffer; he has nothing on but a blanket; he is a splendid fellow--six feet high, with a magnificent pair of legs. In his leather bag he is going to fetch his rations, and I suppose to kick his wife with his beautiful legs when he gets home. He has a right to; he bought her for two oxen. There is a lean dog going after him, to whom I suppose he never gives more than a bone from which he has sucked the marrow; but his dog loves him, as his wife does. There is something of the master about him in spite of his blackness and wool. See how he brandishes his stick and holds up his head!”
“Oh, but aren’t you making fun?” said Gregory, looking doubtfully from her to the Kaffer herd, who rounded the kopje.
“No; I am very serious. He is the most interesting and intelligent thing I can see just now, except, perhaps, Doss. He is profoundly suggestive. Will his race melt away in the heat of a collision with a higher? Are the men of the future to see his bones only in museums--a vestige of one link that spanned between the dog and the white man? He wakes thoughts that run far out into the future and back into the past.”
Gregory was not quite sure how to take these remarks. Being about a Kaffer, they appeared to be of the nature of a joke; but, being seriously spoken, they appeared earnest; so he half laughed and half not, to be on the safe side.
“I’ve often thought so myself. It’s funny we should both think the same; I knew we should if once we talked. But there are other things--love, now,” he added. “I wonder if we would think alike about that. I wrote an essay on love once; the master said it was the best I ever wrote, and I can remember the first sentence still--‘Love is something that you feel in your heart.’”
“That was a trenchant remark. Can’t you remember any more?”
“No,” said Gregory, regretfully; “I’ve forgotten the rest. But tell me what do you think about love?”