and try 34to put Rhodes in a cage. But, of course, if a commando gets through to De Aar they will all rise——”

34

“You think so, Sister?” said the medical Major, deferentially.

“I know so. They will rise anywhere in the Colony if a commando comes actually to them. Presently they will rise in Prieska—if it is only to steal the forage at Van Wyk’s Vlei. Why not?”

“We get most of our opinions of the war from Sister Margaret,” said the civilian doctor of the train. “It’s all new to me, but, so far, all her prophecies have come true.”

A few months ago that doctor had retired from practice to a country house in rainy England, his fortune made and, as he tried to believe, his life-work done. Then the bugles blew, and, rejoicing at the change, he found himself, his experience, and his fine bedside manner, buttoned up in a black-tabbed khaki coat, on a hospital train that covered eleven hundred miles a week, carried a hundred wounded each trip and dealt him more experience in a month than he had ever gained in a year of home practice.

35Sister Margaret and the Captain of Mounted Infantry took their cups outside the tent. The Captain wished to know something more about her. Till that day he had believed South Africa to be populated by sullen Dutchmen and slack-waisted women; and in some clumsy fashion betrayed the belief.

35

“Of course, you don’t see any others where you are,” said Sister Margaret, leniently, from her camp-chair. “They are all at the war. I have two brothers, and a nephew, my sister’s son, and—oh, I can’t count my cousins.” She flung her hands outward with a curiously un-English gesture. “And then, too, you have never been off the railway. You have only seen Capetown? All the schel—all the useless people are there. You should see our country beyond the ranges—out Oudtshorn way. We grow fruit and vines. It is much prettier, I think, than Paarl.”

“I’d like to very much. I may be stationed in Africa after the war is over.”

“Ah, but we know the English officers. They say that this is a ‘beastly country,’ and they do not know how to—to be nice to people. Shall I tell you? There was an 36aide-de-camp at Government House three years ago. He sent out invitations to dinner to Piet—to Mr. Van der Hooven’s wife. And she had been dead eight years, and Van der Hooven—he has the big 

 Prev. P 16/134 next