She loved them all. The mares and
their foals were a perpetual joy to her, and she begged hard to be
allowed to try her powers at breaking in some of the young animals.
Burke, however, would not hear of this. He was very kind to her,
unfailingly considerate in his treatment of her, but by some means
he made her aware that his orders were to be respected. The Kaffir
servants were swift to do his bidding, though she did not find them
so eager to fulfil their duties when he was not at hand.
She laughingly commented upon this one day to Burke, and he amazed
her by pointing to the riding-whip she chanced to be holding at the
time.
"You'll find that's the only medicine for that kind of thing," he
said. "Give 'em a taste of that and they'll respect you!"
She decided he must be joking, but only a few days later he quite
undeceived her on that point by dragging Joe, the house boy, into
the yard and chastising him with a _sjambok_ for some neglected
duty.
Joe howled lustily, and Sylvia yearned to fly to the rescue, but
there was something so judicial about Burke's administration of
punishment that she did not venture to intervene.
When he came in a little later, she was sitting in their
living-room nervously stitching at the sleeve of a shirt that he
had managed to tear on some barbed wire. He had his pipe in his
hand, and there was an air of grim satisfaction about him that
seemed to denote a consciousness of something well done.
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