Part 17 (2/2)

”There are a sight too many of these small birds,” observed Bayfield.

”They want keeping down. Sonny's getting lazy with that air-gun of his.

They'll play the mischief with the garden if he gives them much more rope. There he is, the _schepsel_. Hi! Sonny!” he called out, as a good-looking boy came down the path to meet them. ”Why don't you thin off some of these birds? Look at 'em all. No one would think you'd got an air-gun and half a dozen catapults.”

”The gun's out of order, father,” answered the boy.

”It's always getting out of order. Those air-guns are frauds. Where's Lyn?”

”She was about just now. We watched you from beyond the third gate.

There she is.”

Following his gaze they descried a white-clad feminine form in front of the house, which they were now very near.

CHAPTER FOUR.

LYN.

”Well, Mr Blachland, what luck have you had?”

The speaker was standing on the stoep, whither she had come out to meet them. She was rather a tall girl, with a great deal of golden hair, arranged in some wonderful way of her own which somehow enhanced its volume without appearing loose or untidy. She had blue eyes which looked forth straight and frank, and an exquisite skin, which even the fierce glare of the summer sun, and a great deal of open-air life had not in the least roughened, and of which a few tiny freckles, rather adding piquancy to a sweetly pretty face, oval, refined and full of character, were the only trace. If there was a fault to be found in the said face, it was that its owner showed her gums slightly when she laughed--but the laugh was so bright, so whole-hearted, and lighted up the whole expression so entrancingly that all but the superlatively hypercritical lost sight of the defect altogether.

”He's bowled over that thundering big bushbuck ram we've been trying for so often in Siever's Kloof, Lyn,” answered her father for his guest.

”Well done!” cried the girl. ”You know, Mr Blachland, some of the people around here were becoming quite superst.i.tious about that buck.

They were beginning to declare he couldn't be killed. I suggested a silver bullet such as they had to make for those supernatural stags in the old German legends.”

”A charge of treble A was good enough this time--no, I think I used loepers,” laughed Blachland.

”I almost began to believe in it myself,” went on the girl. ”Some of our best shots around here seemed invariably to miss that particular buck, Mr Earle for instance, and Stepha.n.u.s Bosch, and, I was nearly saying--father--”

”Oh don't, then,” laughed Bayfield. ”A prophet has no honour in his own country. Keep up the tradition, Lyn.”

”And, as for the Englishman, the one that came over here with the Earles, why he missed it both barrels, and they drove it right over him too.”

”By the way, Lyn,” said her father, ”what was that Britisher's name?

I've clean forgotten.”

”That's not strange, for you'll hardly believe it, but so have I.”

”Um--ah--no, we won't believe it. A good-looking young fellow like that!”

”Even then I've forgotten it. Yes, he was a nice-looking boy.”

”Boy!” cried her father. ”Why, the fellow must be a precious deal nearer thirty than twenty.”

”Well, and what's that but a boy?”

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