There was a peach orchard planted round Maraisfontein, which just then was a mass of lovely pink blossom, and as I rode through it slowly, not being sure of my way to the house, a lanky child appeared in front of me, clad in a frock which exactly matched the colour of the peach bloom. I can see her now, her dark hair hanging down her back, and her big, shy eyes staring at me from the shadow of the Dutch _kappie_ which she wore. Indeed, she seemed to be all eyes, like a _dikkop_ or thick-headed plover; at any rate, I noted little else about her. I pulled up my pony and stared at her, feeling very shy and not knowing what to say. For a while she stared back at me, being afflicted, presumably, with the same complaint, then spoke with an effort, in a voice that was very soft and pleasant. “Are you the little Allan Quatermain who is coming to learn French with me?” she asked in Dutch. “Of course,” I answered in the same tongue, which I knew well; “but why do you call me little, missie? I am taller than you,” I added indignantly, for when I was young my lack of height was always a sore point with me. “I think not,” she replied. “But get off that horse, and we will measure here against this wall.” So I dismounted, and, having assured herself that I had no heels to my boots (I was wearing the kind of raw-hide slippers that the Boers call _veld-shoon_), she took the writing slate which she was carrying—it had no frame, I remember, being, in fact, but a piece of the material used for roofing—and, pressing it down tight on my stubbly hair, which stuck up then as now, made a deep mark in the soft sandstone of the wall with the hard pointed pencil. “There,” she said, “that is justly done. Now, little Allan, it is your turn to measure me.” So I measured her, and, behold! she was the taller by a whole half-inch. “You are standing on tiptoe,” I said in my vexation. “Little Allan,” she replied, “to stand on tiptoe would be to lie before the good Lord, and when you come to know me better you will learn that, though I have a dreadful temper and many other sins, I do not lie.” I suppose that I looked snubbed and mortified, for she went on in her grave, grown-up way: “Why are you angry because God made me taller than you? especially as I am whole months older, for my father told me so. Come, let us write our names against these marks, so that in a year or two you may see how you outgrow me.” Then with the slate pencil she scratched “Marie” against her mark very deeply, so that it might last, she said; after which I wrote “Allan” against mine.