Some men are fat, and some
men are thin; some men drink brandy, and some men drink gin; but it all
comes to the same thing in the end; it's all one. A man's a man, you
know."
Here they came upon Gregory, who was sitting in the shade before the house.
Tant Sannie shook hands with him.
"I'm glad you're going to get married," she said. "I hope you'll have as
many children in five years as a cow has calves, and more too. I think
I'll just go and have a look at your soap-pot before I start," she said,
turning to Em. "Not that I believe in this new plan of putting soda in the
pot. If the dear Father had meant soda to be put into soap what would He
have made milk-bushes for, and stuck them all over the veld as thick as
lambs in the lambing season?"
She waddled off after Em in the direction of the built-in soap-pot, leaving
Gregory as they found him, with his dead pipe lying on the bench beside
him, and his blue eyes gazing out far across the flat, like one who sits on
the seashore watching that which is fading, fading from him.
Against his breast was a letter found in the desk addressed to himself, but
never posted. It held only four words: "You must marry Em." He wore it
in a black bag round his neck. It was the only letter she had ever written
to him.
"You see if the sheep don't have the scab this year!" said Tant Sannie as
she waddled after Em.
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