Perhaps it is because I am only a woman;
but I do love you as much as I can."
Now the Kaffer maids were coming from the huts. He kissed her again, eyes
and mouth and hands, and left her.
Tant Sannie was well satisfied when told of the betrothment. She herself
contemplated marriage within the year with one or other of her numerous
vrijers, and she suggested that the weddings might take place together.
Em set to work busily to prepare her own household linen and wedding
garments. Gregory was with her daily, almost hourly, and the six months
which elapsed before Lyndall's return passed, as he felicitously phrased
it, "like a summer night, when you are dreaming of some one you love."
Late one evening, Gregory sat by his little love, turning the handle of her
machine as she drew her work through it, and they talked of the changes
they would make when the Boer-woman was gone, and the farm belonged to them
alone. There should be a new room here, and a kraal there. So they
chatted on. Suddenly Gregory dropped the handle, and impressed a fervent
kiss on the fat hand that guided the linen.
"You are so beautiful, Em," said the lover. "It comes over me in a flood
suddenly how I love you."
Em smiled.
"Tant Sannie says when I am her age no one will look at me; and it is true.
My hands are as short and broad as a duck's foot, and my forehead is so
low, and I haven't any nose.
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