Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases | Page 3

his usual place at the table scowling over his folded arms.
"Old Voss had not ridden off his liquor; and he staggered into the house
singing a dirty English song. He had a bottle in his hands, and banged it
down on the table in front of his son.
"'Now, old sheep's head,' he shouted, 'have a drink and drop those airs
of yours.'
"Barend sat where he was, and said not a word--just watched the other.
"'Come on,' shouted old Voss; 'I'm not going to drink alone. If you
won't take it pleasantly I'll make you take it, and be damned to you!'

"Barend sat still, scowling always. I dare say a sober man would have
seen something in his eyes and let be. But old Voss was blind to his
danger, and shouted on.
"The younger man kept his horrid silence, and never moved, till the
father was goaded to a drunken rage.
"'If you won't drink,' he screamed, 'take that,' and he flung a full cupful
of the spirit right in the young man's face.
"Then everything was in the fire. The two men fought in the room like
beasts, oversetting table and lamp, and stamping into the fire on the
hearth. Barend was mad with a passion of long nursing, and hewed
with his great fists till the old man fell heavily to the ground, and lay
moaning.
"Barend stood over him, glowering. 'Swine!' he said to his father;
'swine and brute! get you out of this house to the veld. You are no
father of mine.'
"But the old man was much hurt, and lay where he had fallen, groaning
as though he had not heard.
"'I will have you out of this,' said the son. 'If you are come to die, die on
the road. I had wished you dead for years.'
"So he wound his hand, with the knuckles all over blood, in the old
man's white hair, and threw open the door with his other hand.
"'Out with you!' he shouted, and dragged him down the step and into
the yard. Yes, he dragged him across the yard to the gate; and when he
unfastened the gate the old man opened his eyes and spoke.
"'Leave me here,' he said, speaking slowly and painfully. 'Leave me
here, my son. Thus far I dragged my father.'"
The Vrouw Grobelaar, to point a weighty moral, turned her face upon
Katje. But that young lady was sleeping soundly with her mouth open.

THE DREAM-FACE
"I wish," said Katje, looking up from her book--"I wish a man would
come and make me marry him."
The Vrouw Grobelaar wobbled where she sat with stupefaction.
"Yes," continued Katje, musingly casting her eyes to the rafters, "I wish
a man would just take me by the hand--so-- and not listen to anything I
said, nor let me go however I should struggle, and carry me off on the
peak of his saddle and marry me. I think I would be willing to die for a
man who could do that."
The Vrouw Grobelaar found her voice at last. "Katje," she said with
deep-toned emphasis, "you are talking wickedness, just wickedness. Do
you think I would let a man--any man, or perhaps an Englishman--carry
you off like a strayed ewe?"
"The sort of man I'm thinking of," replied the maiden, "wouldn't ask
you for permission. He'd simply pick me up, and away he'd go."
At times, and in certain matters, Vrouw Grobelaar would display a
ready acumen.
"Tell me, Katje," she said now, "who is this man?"
Then Katje dropped her book and, sitting upright with an
unimpeachable surprise, stared at the old lady.
"I'm not thinking of any man," she remarked calmly. "I was just
wishing there was a man who would have the pluck to do it."
The Vrouw Grobelaar shook her head. "Good Burghers don't carry girls
away," she said. "They come and drink coffee, and sit with them, and
talk about the sheep."
"And behave as if they had never worn boots before, and didn't know
what to do with their hands," added the maiden. "Aunt, am I a girl to
marry a man who upsets three cups of coffee in half an hour and

borrows a handkerchief to wipe his knees?"
Now there could be no shadow of doubt that this was an open-breasted
cut at young Fanie van Tromp, whose affection for Katje was a matter
of talk on the farms, and whose overtures that young lady had
consistently sterilized with ridicule.
The Vrouw Grobelaar was void of delicacy. "Fanie is a good lad," she
said, "and when his father dies he will have a very large property."
"It'll console him for not adding me to his live stock," retorted Katje.
"He is handsome, too," continued the