He turned and said something to his companions and to the Zulu Mouti, who went on with the cart, then he came towards her smiling and with outstretched hand.
"How do you do, Jess ?" he said.

"So I have found you all right ?" She took his hand and answered, almost angrily, "Why have you come?
Why did you leave Bessie and my uncle ?" "I came because I was sent, also because I wished it.

I wanted to bring you back home before Pretoria was besieged." "You must have been mad! How could you expect to get back?
We shall both be shut up here together now." "So it appears.

Well, things might be worse," he added cheerfully.
"I do not think that anything could be worse," she answered with a stamp of her foot, then, quite thrown off her balance, she burst incontinently into a flood of tears.
John Niel was a very simple-minded man, and it never struck him to attribute her grief to any other cause than anxiety at the state of affairs and at her incarceration for an indefinite period in a besieged town that ran the daily risk of being taken _vi et armis_.

Still he was a little hurt at the manner of his reception after his long and most perilous journey, which is not, perhaps, to be wondered at.
"Well, Jess," he said, "I think that you might speak a little more kindly to me, considering--considering all things.