"How goes it with the fruit?" he ventured instead.

"The fruit is a beetje behind-time."

Nick looked gloomily towards his apricot orchard. Chrissie having piloted Braddon past a bad place was now smiling down her retrousse nose. He was considering the matter of moving on when someone else entered upon the scene. Old Retief had seen the Cape cart coming long since but, according to his wont, said nothing. The others were too much occupied with their own thoughts to notice anything, until the dust of Carol Uys’s trap blew over them from the loose ground in front of the stoep.

"Dag, Oom!"

"Dag, Carol!"

The thin long-legged young Boer descended from his cart, fastened the pole of it to a staple driven into one of the blue-gum trees and came up the stoep steps. He was a pleasant-faced fellow about six feet three inches in height but of rather slight build. Chrissie had always liked his gentle eyes and gentle ways inherited from some far-off Huguenot ancestor, but to-day she noticed for the first time that he walked flat-footed and that the toe of one of his shoes pointed east and the other west. For the first time too she was not impatient at her father’s off-hand, rather scornful manner of greeting him. Old Retief despised the Uys clan, lock, stock, and barrel, because they were bad farmers. In fact though they lived on farms they were no farmers at all. Everyone knew it. An Uys farm was always farthest away from the markets and always pushed away in the corner of some mountainous kloof where the grazing was sour for the beasts and the land would grow nothing. Naturally there was nothing for the sons of such a farmer to do to make ends meet but take to transport riding or cattle dealing. And the truth was that the Uys taste lay that way—​that was what old Retief had against them. They were horsey men, fonder of the road than the roof-tree, men who would sooner ride a hundred miles to deal for a pair of goats than do one day’s work at the tail of a plough. Retief despised such shiftless wanderers and wanted nothing of the sort for a son-in-law. Wherefore Carol Uys was none too welcome at Jackalsfontein. However, the handshaking that ensued was hearty enough and Chrissie, with heightened colour, poured coffee for the new-comer, and fresh cups all round.

"Well? What broken-down old crocks have you got with you to-day, Carol?" asked the old man grimly.

Uys waved his hand at the two handsome bays with black manes and tails, harnessed to the cart.

"Look then! They speak for themselves, Oom. As smart a pair of Cape horses as you will see from here to Johannesburg. The very thing to drive Miss Chrissie to kerk with on Sunday."

Needless to say Retief had passed a shrewd eye over them long since and come to his own conclusions. His business now was to conceal those conclusions, which happened to be favourable, behind a contemptuous smile and such sarcasm as he could muster. No very great amount!

"I’m not on the look-out for grandparents for those I have to take Chrissie to church with already!" he remarked.

"Ah! Oom Nick must not make jokes about those bays," expostulated Carol seriously. "They are Clan-William horses—​three-year olds. Why, they haven’t whistled yet [cut their baby-teeth]. Oompie can look in their mouths and see."

"Mastag! It is hard enough to see them at all, they are so maar [thin]!"

Carol aggrieved, turned to Chrissie.

"No one could call them maar. It is a dry season and I haven’t been able to get them much forage by the way, but no one can call them maar."

"How much do you want for them?" asked Braddon.

"Sixty pounds apiece, not a sixpence less," declared Carol. "Don’t you think I’m right, Miss Chrissie?"

Chrissie, with her father’s eye on her, knew better than to respond.

"Hundred and twenty the pair! A stiff price," remarked the engineer.

"Not too stiff. Oom Nick knows the value of a good horse and is able to pay it," said Carol firmly. He may have been no farmer but he knew his business as a horse-seller.

"Their feet are too soft for this veld," grumbled old Retief.

"Not a bit of it, Oom. Clan-William horses are hard-veld horses—​iron feet and mouths of velvet. You know it good enough."

"Well, and what’s the matter with my own horses that I drive to kerk every Sunday?" asked Nick Retief aggressively.

"Oom, they are not bad horses. I’m not saying they are bad horses, but they are five years old and don’t match—​you know they don’t match. One has got a bless [white blaze down forehead] and the other has a white foot."

This hit the old man hard. That bless and white foot had been his bane for many a day.