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 sea-shore watching that which is fading, fading from him. Against his breast was a letter found in a 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. “It’s with all these new inventions that the wrath of God must fall on us. What were the children of Israel punished for, if it wasn’t for making the golden calf? I may have my sins, but I do remember the tenth commandment: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayst live long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee!’ It’s all very well to say we honor them, and then to be finding out things that they never knew, and doing things in a way they never did them! My mother boiled soap with bushes, and I will boil soap with bushes. If the wrath of God is to fall upon this land,” said Tant’ Sannie, with the serenity of conscious virtue, “it shall not be through me. Let them make their steam wagons and their fire-carriages; let them go on as though the dear Lord didn’t know what he was about when he gave horses and oxen legs — the destruction of the Lord will follow them. I don’t know how such people read their Bibles. When do we hear of Moses or Noah riding in a railway? The Lord sent fire-carriages out of heaven in those days; there’s no chance of his sending them for us if we go on in this way,” said Tant’ Sannie sorrowfully, thinking of the splendid chance which this generation had lost.

Arrived at the soap-pot she looked over into it thoughtfully.

“Depend upon it you’ll get the itch, or some other disease; the blessing of the Lord’ll never rest upon it,” said the Boer-woman. Then suddenly she broke forth. “And she eighty-two, and goats, and rams, and eight thousand morgen, and the rams real angora, and two thousand sheep, and a short-horned bull,” said Tant’ Sannie, standing upright and planting a hand on each hip.

Em looked at her in silent wonder. Had connubial bliss and the joys of motherhood really turned the old Boer-woman’s head?