' Gregory
Rose is so like you."
"I never read 'The Story of an African Farm,'" said Hoopdriver.
"I must. What's he like?"
"You must read the book. But it's a wonderful place, with its
mixture of races, and its brand-new civilisation jostling the old
savagery. Were you near Khama?"
"He was a long way off from our place," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "We
had a little ostrich farm, you know--Just a few hundred of 'em,
out Johannesburg way."
"On the Karroo--was it called?"
"That's the term. Some of it was freehold though. Luckily. We got
along very well in the old days.--But there's no ostriches on
that farm now." He had a diamond mine in his head, just at the
moment, but he stopped and left a little to the girl's
imagination. Besides which it had occurred to him with a kind of
shock that he was lying.
"What became of the ostriches?"
"We sold 'em off, when we parted with the farm. Do you mind if I
have another cigarette? That was when I was quite a little chap,
you know, that we had this ostrich farm."
"Did you have Blacks and Boers about you?"
"Lots," said Mr. Hoopdriver, striking a match on his instep and
beginning to feel hot at the new responsibility he had brought
upon himself.
"How interesting! Do you know, I've never been out of England
except to Paris and Mentone and Switzerland."
"One gets tired of travelling (puff) after a bit, of course."
"You must tell me about your farm in South Africa. It always
stimulates my imagination to think of these places.
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