Part 28 (1/2)

The lower portion of Harmony, through which the Aapies river runs, was occupied by Italian gardeners, who employed a varying number of Kaffir labourers in the extensive fruit and vegetable gardens.

The upper part, on which the house stood, was entirely under Mrs. van Warmelo's management. No white servants were kept, the domestic staff consisting of native gardeners, a stable-boy, and a house-boy, neither was there a single female domestic, either white or black, on the place.

One day a small white son of the soil presented himself and asked for work.

Mrs. van Warmelo looked him up and down and said she did not farm with children.

”What is your name?” Hansie asked.

There was no answer, and then she noticed that the little stranger was staring straight in front of him, while two great tears rolled slowly down his cheeks.

This touched her, and she repeated her question persuasively.

”Flippie,” he answered brokenly.

”Where is your mother?”

”Dead.”

”And your father?”

”Fighting, with five sons.”

Then Hansie felt inclined to take him in her arms and kiss him for his dead mother and brave father and brothers.

She turned to her mother and whispered:

”Let Flippie stay. Make some agreement with him and let us try him as errand-boy or general help in the house and garden.”

Mrs. van Warmelo nodded and turned again to him. The conversation which pa.s.sed between them is not recorded in Hansie's diary, but Flippie stayed, and within a week the Harmonites wondered how they had managed to exist without him for so long.

He was as sharp as a needle, and, though only thirteen years of age, he proved to be a perfect ”man” of business, rising early every day to go to the morning market and gardening with surprising energy and ambition.

This pleased Mrs. van Warmelo so much that she gave him a plot of ground to cultivate for himself, and he immediately set to work to plant vegetables, spending every spare moment of the day in _his_ garden.

When Hansie laughingly said that she hoped to be his first customer, he protested vehemently against the idea of selling anything to her, and time showed that he meant to keep his word.

All he had was given away with large-hearted generosity and when he had nothing more to give, he _took_ all he required from other people!

Yes, I am afraid Flippie's ideas of honesty were curious in the extreme. He had no idea of ”mine and thine,” as we say in Dutch.[2]

Arguments were of no avail, for Flippie was the scornfullest little boy I ever came across and knew everything better than his superiors.

Hansie set to work to study him, but found it necessary to reconstruct her ideas of him every day. Flippie baffled her at every turn.

One day she thought he would turn out to be a genius, the next she declared positively that he would come to the gallows, and the third she wondered helplessly whether he could by any chance do both.

Flippie could lie and deceive with the most angelic face and could melt into tears on the least provocation or whenever it suited his book to do so.