All day the same peaceful life will run on there. When he has drunk his coffee, the farmer, with his sons, will proceed to the kraals to count out the sheep and goats; as he stands at the gate watching them the early sunbeams will glint on their damp fleeces as they walk down the sandy road, on their way to the veld, with the Kaffir herd behind them. When the men return to the house it will be near eight o'clock, the sun already growing hot; the house-mother, from her elbow-chair beside the little table, calls out to bring the breakfast, and the children, who have been playing about before the door and on the kraal walls, troop in. If a sheep or a goat has been killed, there will be fried liver and lights, and if there is no bread there will be roasted cakes, made of unleavened flour and water and baked on the coals, or if there be neither, each person will be given a cup of coffee and a biscuit, without gathering at the table. By nine or ten, if the day be hot, the girl children are called inside, or told to play in the shade of the house, for fear of browning or freckling their skins; the shutters of the windows will all be closed, the front door alone letting in what light and air enters; the house-mother will sit suckling her baby, or making a little garment, and calling now and then to one of the daughters to make more coffee. If there are no cattle to be rounded up, or any small farm duties to be performed, the grown or half-grown sons go and sit in the wagon-house, and smoke and talk, or make yokes or vel-schoens; or if there be cattle to see to, or out-kraals to visit, they or the father mount their horses and ride away into the veld, often taking their guns with them. If there be no work, then the father sits on the sofa in the front room, opposite the house-mother in her elbow-chair, and folds his arms, smokes, and sighs, "Oh--ja"! and stretches himself, and drinks his ninth cup of coffee, and smokes again, till at half-past eleven he goes into the bedroom to lie down for half an hour, having been up since half-past three. At twelve the dinner is on the table: there are seldom vegetables, and often not bread, but there is always a great dish of mutton, and generally some boiled grain, and when the meal is over the Kaffir maids clean the pots, and the house-mother goes to the back door to see that they are not scratching in them with a spoon.[53] When the maids have ended they go back to their huts, and every one goes to lie down, and the house is closed; and only the flies, and some recalcitrant little boys or girls who will not go to sleep, but creep out silently to play in the empty front room, or in the shadow of the house, are left awake. The cocks and hens strut before the doors, the bull-dogs lie in the shade of the wagon-house, the little hand-lamb looks for a few blades of green among the bushes, and the story of yesterday repeats itself.