He had the sense, however, to keep his temper--outwardly, at any rate.
"I was not in the Zulu war, Mr.Muller," he said, and just then old Silas Croft rode up, and the conversation dropped.
Mr.Frank Muller stopped to dinner and far on into the afternoon, for his lost ox seemed to have entirely slipped his memory.

There he sat close to the fair Bessie, smoking and drinking gin-water, and talking with great volubility in English sprinkled with Boer-Dutch terms that John Niel did not understand, and gazing at the young lady in a manner which John somehow found unpleasant.

Of course it was no affair of his, and he had no interest in the matter, but for all that he thought this remarkable-looking Dutchman exceedingly disagreeable.

At last, indeed, he could bear it no longer, and hobbled out for a little walk with Jess, who, in her abrupt way, offered to show him the garden.
"You don't like that man ?" she said to him, as they went slowly down the slope in front of the house.
"No; do you ?" "I think," replied Jess quietly, but with much emphasis, "that he is the most odious man I ever saw--and the most curious." Then she relapsed into silence, only broken now and again by an occasional remark about the flowers and trees.
Half an hour afterwards, when they arrived again at the top of the slope, Mr.Muller was just riding off down the avenue of blue gums.

By the verandah stood a Hottentot named Jantje, who had been holding the Dutchman's horse.