What it could not swallow ran off in mad rivulets to the great
sloot, that now foamed like an angry river across the flat. Even the
little furrow between the farmhouse and the kraals was now a stream, knee-
deep, which almost bore away the Kaffer women who crossed it. It had
rained for twenty-four hours, and still the rain poured on. The fowls had
collected--a melancholy crowd--in and about the wagon-house, and the
solitary gander, who alone had survived the six months' want of water,
walked hither and thither, printing his webbed footmarks on the mud, to
have them washed out the next instant by the pelting rain, which at eleven
o'clock still beat on the walls and roofs with unabated ardour.
Gregory, as he worked in the loft, took no notice of it beyond stuffing a
sack into the broken pane to keep it out; and, in spite of the pelt and
patter, Em's clear voice might be heard through the open trap-door from the
dining room, where she sat at work, singing the "Blue Water:"
"And take me away,
And take me away,
And take me away,
To the Blue Water"--
that quaint, childish song of the people, that has a world of sweetness,
and sad, vague yearning when sung over and over dreamily by a woman's voice
as she sits alone at her work.
But Gregory heard neither that nor yet the loud laughter of the Kaffer
maids, that every now and again broke through from the kitchen, where they
joked and worked.
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