She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had never done it
again, so she took Em.
"So you will defy me, too, will you, you Englishman's ugliness!" she cried,
and with one hand she forced the child down, and held her head tightly
against her knee; with the other she beat her first upon one cheek, and
then upon the other.
For one instant Lyndall looked on, then she laid her small fingers on the
Boer-woman's arm. With the exertion of half its strength Tant Sannie might
have flung the girl back upon the stones. It was not the power of the
slight fingers, tightly though they clinched her broad wrist--so tightly
that at bedtime the marks were still there; but the Boer-woman looked into
the clear eyes and at the quivering white lips, and with a half-surprised
curse relaxed her hold. The girl drew Em's arm through her own.
"Move!" she said to Bonaparte, who stood in the door, and he, Bonaparte the
invincible, in the hour of his triumph, moved to give her place.
The Hottentot ceased to laugh, and an uncomfortable silence fell on all the
three in the doorway.
Once in their room, Em sat down on the floor and wailed bitterly. Lyndall
lay on the bed with her arm drawn across her eyes, very white and still.
"Hoo, hoo!" cried Em; "and they won't let him take the grey mare; and Waldo
has gone to the mill.
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