It was the first
visitor that had appeared on the farm since his arrival, and he looked at
her with interest. She was a tall, pudgy girl of fifteen, weighing a
hundred and fifty pounds, with baggy pendulous cheeks and up-turned nose.
She strikingly resembled Tant Sannie, in form and feature, but her sleepy
good eyes lacked that twinkle that dwelt in the Boer-woman's small orbs.
She was attired in a bright green print, wore brass rings in her ears and
glass beads round her neck, and was sucking the tip of her large finger as
she looked at the pigs.
"Who is it that has come?" asked Bonaparte, when he stood drinking his
coffee in the front room.
"Why, my niece, to be sure," said Tant Sannie, the Hottentot maid
translating. "She's the only daughter of my only brother Paul, and she's
come to visit me. She'll be a nice mouthful to the man that can get her,"
added Tant Sannie. "Her father's got two thousand pounds in the green
wagon box under his bed, and a farm, and five thousand sheep, and God
Almighty knows how many goats and horses. They milk ten cows in mid-
winter, and the young men are after her like flies about a bowl of milk.
She says she means to get married in four months, but she doesn't yet know
to whom. It was so with me when I was young," said Tant Sannie. "I've sat
up with the young men four and five nights a week.
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