the house, who also has been taking her siesta, appears in her dark print gown, and with a clean white pocket-handkerchief tied hastily round her throat in honour of the newcomer. She silently shakes hands, and goes to her elbow-chair, placing her feet on the stove, which, in the summertime, is coalless, and serves merely as a footstool. As she fans herself to drive away the flies, which in Africa and in the neighbourhood of stock kraals are numerous, she calls to the Kaffir maid in the kitchen at the back to make haste and let the kettle boil, or coaxes the three-year-old child, who stands pressing backwards against her knee, eyeing the stranger from under a mass of tumbled hair, with a finger in its mouth, to go and tell the elder sister to come and make the coffee. Even in her youth the house-mother has been generally buxom, and, when past it, is often stout, as the result of a quiescent life and from the lack of open-air exercise.[48] From time to time the elder children slink out of the side sleeping apartments, with little bare feet or with undressed leather shoes, and generally no socks. They extend their little hands and say "Dag!"[49] and seat themselves silently on the chairs with their little feet dangling down. Presently an older girl, almost or quite grown-up, appears, who has been detained by some efforts at personal adornment; she has smoothed the top of her heavy, silky, dark or fair hair with a brush or comb, and has put a silk handkerchief round her throat, and perhaps has on her Sunday town-made shoes. She shakes hands somewhat bashfully, and goes through to the back room, hurrying on the coffee-making, while we sit, and, with intervals of silence, discuss the weather and the health of the stock. Presently one of the children, growing tired of its perch on the chair, goes out, and leaves the lower half of the front door open, and the hens enter, and the two large dogs slink quietly in and lie down under the table. When the hand-lamb and a couple more fowls follow, the mother calls to one of the children to drive them out, but the dogs remain under the table, winking with their yellow eyes at us. By this time the coffee has come. It is placed in an urn on the little side-table with a brazier of hot coals beneath it, and the eldest daughter pours it out and hands it round. In the wall of the room there is generally a small cupboard, the door of which is made with panes of glass, and which looks like a blind window. Here are kept the spare cups and saucers, the black bottle of cocoa-nut oil with which the whole family oil their heads on Sunday mornings, and whatever else in the way of crockery and ornament, and not for daily use, the house contains; and, if there be not enough cups out, some are now produced for the use of the strangers. Even the smallest child has its basin of coffee, and when the cups and basins have been used they are put into a brass dish of water and covered with a cloth, to be free from flies and