The Boer-woman smirked complacently.

“Where are you going to?” asked Tant’ Sannie presently, seeing that Bonaparte rose.

“Ha! I’m just going to the kraals; I’ll be in to supper.” said Bonaparte.

Nevertheless, when he reached his own door he stopped and turned in there. Soon after he stood before the little glass, arrayed in his best white shirt with the little tucks, and shaving himself. He had on his very best trousers, and had heavily oiled the little fringe at the back of his head, which, however, refused to become darker. But what distressed him most was his nose — it was very red. He rubbed his finger and thumb on the wall, and put a little whitewash on it; but, finding it rather made matters worse, he rubbed it off again. Then he looked carefully into his own eyes. They certainly were a little pulled down at the outer corners, which gave them the appearance of looking crosswise; but then they were a nice blue. So he put on his best coat, took up his stick, and went out to supper, feeling on the whole well satisfied.

“Aunt,” said Trana to Tant’ Sannie when that night they lay together in the great wooden bed, “why does the Englishman sigh so when he looks at me?”

“Ha!” said Tant’ Sannie, who was half asleep, but suddenly started, wide awake. “It’s because he thinks you look like me. I tell you, Trana,” said Tant’ Sannie, “the man is mad with love of me. I told him the other night I couldn’t marry till Em was sixteen, or I’d lose all the sheep her father left me. And he talked about Jacob working seven years and seven years again for his wife. And of course he meant me,” said Tant’ Sannie pompously. “But he won’t get me so easily as he thinks; he’ll have to ask more than once.”

“Oh!” said Trana, who was a lumpish girl and not much given to talking; but presently she added, “Aunt, why does the Englishman always knock against a person when he passes them?”

“That’s because you are always in the way,” said Tant’ Sannie.

“But, Aunt,” said Trana, presently, “I think he is very ugly.”

“Phugh!” said Tant’ Sannie. “It’s only because we’re not accustomed to such noses in this country. In his country he says all the people have such noses, and the redder your nose is the higher you are. He’s of the family of the Queen Victoria, you know,” said Tant’ Sannie, wakening up with her subject; “and he doesn’t think anything of governors and Church elders, and such people; they are nothing to him. When his aunt with the dropsy dies he’ll have money enough to buy all the farms in this district!”

“Oh!” said Trana. That certainly made a difference.

“Yes,” said Tant’ Sannie; “and he’s only forty-one, though you’d take him to be sixty. And he told me last night the real reason of his baldness.”

Tant’ Sannie then proceeded to relate how, at eighteen years of age, Bonaparte had courted a fair young lady. How a deadly rival, jealous of his verdant locks, his golden flowing hair, had, with a damnable and insinuating deception, made him a present of a pot of pomatum. How, applying it in the evening, on rising in the morning he found his pillow strewn with the golden locks, and, looking into the glass, beheld the shining and smooth expanse which henceforth he must bear. The few remaining hairs were turned to a silvery whiteness, and the young lady married his rival.