She was cutting out aprons on the table.

“Oh, but it’s late, and I think they want to kill him,” said Em, weeping bitterly; and finding that no more consolation was to be gained from her cousin, she went off blubbering — “I wonder you can cut out aprons when Waldo is shut up like that.”

For ten minutes after she was gone Lyndall worked on quietly; then she folded up her stuff, rolled it tightly together, and stood before the closed door of the sitting-room with her hands closely clasped. A flush rose to her face; she opened the door quickly, walked in, and went to the nail on which the key of the fuel-room hung. Bonaparte and Tant’ Sannie sat there and saw her.

“What do you want?” they asked together.

“This key,” she said, holding it up, and looking at them.

“Do you mean her to have it?” said Tant’ Sannie, in Dutch.

“Why don’t you stop her?” asked Bonaparte, in English.

“Why don’t you take it from her?” said Tant’ Sannie.

So they looked at each other, talking, while Lyndall walked to the fuel-house with the key, her underlip bitten in.

“Waldo,” she said, as she helped him to stand up, and twisted his arm about her waist to support him, “we will not be children always; we shall have the power too, some day.” She kissed his naked shoulder with her soft little mouth. It was all the comfort her young soul could give him.

CHAPTER XIII

HE MAKES LOVE

“HERE,” said Tant’ Sannie to her Hottentot maid, “I have been in this house four years, and never been up in the loft. Fatter women than I go up ladders; I will go up to-day and see what it is like, and put it to rights up there. You bring the little ladder, and stand at the bottom.”

“There’s one would be sorry if you were to fall,” said the Hottentot maid, leering at Bonaparte’s pipe, that lay on the table.

“Hold your tongue, jade,” said her mistress, trying to conceal a pleased smile, “and go and fetch the ladder.”

There was a never-used trap-door at one end of the sitting-room; this the Hottentot maid pushed open, and setting the ladder against it, the Boer-woman with some danger and difficulty climbed into the loft. Then the Hottentot maid took the ladder away, as her husband was mending the wagon-house and needed it, but the trap-door was left open.

For a little while Tant’ Sannie poked about among the empty bottles and skins, and looked at the bag of peaches that Waldo was supposed to have liked so; then she sat down near the trap-door beside a barrel of salt mutton. She found that the pieces of meat were much too large, and took out her clasp-knife to divide them.

That was always the way when one left things to servants, she grumbled to herself; but when once she was married to her husband Bonaparte it would not matter whether a sheep spoiled or no — when once his rich aunt with the dropsy was dead. She smiled as she dived her hand into the pickle-water.