_Miss P._ (_petulantly_) "Oh, the war! That is just like you Englishmen--you paragons of manly virtue--you make the war a cloak for all your sins. It is such an upright war, therefore in its furtherance you can do no wrong--cannot even be unmannerly. It is this that has made you so beloved in the Republics; but how does your attitude hold good with me? I am a loyal British subject, living at peace with all men in a British colony. What right, therefore, have you to catechise me as to my goings and comings? I do not even live within the legitimate area of your so-called just war. I am only exposed to its rigours--that is, as far as the insolence of those who should be our defenders affects us women--because you English, in spite of your vaunted power and military magnitude, cannot defend us, your Africander dependants, from a few simple farmers. Where is your manhood, where the courtly bearing of the Englishman, of which I have heard so much--and seen so little?" _I. O._ "Really, Miss Pretorius, if I may say so, I think that you exaggerate the case. Unfortunately we are at war. You claim consideration on the score of loyalty. Are you astonished that I should have mistaken your attitude towards us? Your two brothers only yesterday were in arms against us. One is wounded, the other a prisoner in our hands. Is it surprising that I regarded you as their accomplice in rebellion?" _Miss P._ "I am surprised at nothing that an Englishman may do. But why should I be compromised because my brothers have taken up arms against you. Am I not of an age to formulate opinions of my own? or is it that you consider that we poor Africander girls have no intelligence, that our opinions must of necessity be bound up in those of our men-folk, that we have no mind above the duties of the drudging _hausfrau_? No, sir; I am an Africander loyalist--more loyal by far than the renegade white who brought you here. And if you wish to know the reason of my presence at Britstown, I am not averse to telling you, provided you will not claim to have the information as a right." _I. O._ (_with a touch of penitence in his voice, which for a moment caused a smile to flicker round the corners of the girl's mouth_) "Of course, Miss Pretorius, I have no right. You will persist in misunderstanding me."