Suddenly Arlo sprang up, barking furiously.
"Shut up, you brute," growled Falkner, for this sudden interruption had,
as he put it, made him jump. But the dog heeded him not, as he sprang
up and rushed down the steps still giving vehement tongue.
"Be quiet, Arlo, do you hear!" ordered his mistress. "It's only
Ivondwe."
The calm clear voice commanded obedience where Falkner's bluster did
not. To the furious barking succeeded a series of threatening growls,
not loud but deep. In the midst of which the innocent cause of the
disturbance appeared, smiling, and as little perturbed by this sudden
and rather formidable onslaught, as though it were a matter of an
ordinary kraal cur.
To the physiognomist this Ivondwe was a remarkably prepossessing
native--rather handsome in the good-looking style of his race. He had a
pleasant, open countenance, good-humoured withal, and when he smiled it
would be hard to equal his display of magnificent white teeth. Though
somewhat past his first youth and the owner of a couple of wives he did
not wear the head-ring; for he was fond of earning money in doing spells
of work for white men, such as waggon driving, or the sort of job on
which he was now engaged: and this being so he held, and perhaps
rightly, that the ring would not be exactly in keeping. I had known him
well for some time and had always had a high opinion of him.
Now he saluted, and addressing himself to Falkner, in very fair English,
asked leave to go over to a neighbouring kraal after the cattle were in.
There was a merrymaking there, on the strength of the wedding of
someone or other of his numerous kinsfolk.
"So, Ivondwe," I said, in the vernacular, when he had got his answer.
"So you speak with the tongue of the Amangisi, and I knew it not?"
He laughed.
"That is so, Iqalaqala," he answered. "Yet it is well for Umsindo, who
is long since tired of talking to deaf ones. _Au_! How shall he talk
yonder--_kwa_ Majendwa?"
Umsindo, meaning a man who is given to swagger, was Falkner's native
name, though he didn't know it.
"That we shall see," I said. "It may be that by then his tongue will
have become loosened. But now, while he is away you must do well by
these here. They treat you well, and their hands are very open--so open
that soon you will be for building a new hut."
He laughed, and owned that such might indeed be the case. All the while
the great white dog was walking up and down behind him, eyeing his
calves and snarling malevolently.
"The dog," I went on. "He is very unfriendly towards you. Why?"
"Who may say? The dogs of the white people are seldom friendly to us,
and our dogs are seldom friendly to the whites. And this dog is very
white."