She dropped into a desultory conversation with Mr. Samson, with occasional side-references to Dr. Jakes, and managed at the same time to keep an eye on the other two. Margaret had walked across to Ford, and was sitting at his side on the window-ledge; he had a three-days-old copy of the _Dopfontein Courant_, in which the scanty news of the district was printed in English and Dutch and they were looking it over together. Ford held the paper and Margaret leaned against his arm to share it; the intimacy of their attitude was disagreeable to Mrs. Jakes. An alliance between the two of them would be altogether too strong for her, and besides, it was warfare as she understood it to destroy the foe's supports whenever possible.
"Nothing in the rag, I suppose, Ford?" asked Mr. Samson, in his high, intolerant voice.
"Not a thing," answered Ford, "unless you 're interested in the price of wools."
"Grease wool per pound," suggested Margaret. "Guess how much that is, Mr. Samson."
"It ought to be cheap," said Mr. Samson. "It sounds beastly."
"Well, then, how 's this?" Margaret craned across Ford's shoulder and read: "'Mr. Ben Bongers of Tomtown, the well-known billiard-marker, underwent last week the sad experience of being kicked at the hands of Mr. Jacobus Van Dam's _quaai_ cock. Legal proceedings are pending.' There now. But does anybody know what kicked him?"
"Cock ostrich," rumbled Dr. Jakes from the back of the room. "_Quaai_--that means bad-tempered."
"You see," said Ford, "ostriches are common hereabouts. They say cock and ostrich is understood. What would they call a barn-door cock, though?"
"A poultry," said Mr. Samson. "But we must watch for those legal proceedings; they ought to be good."
Mrs. Jakes had listened in silence, but now an idea occurred to her.
"There 's nothing about that woman in Capetown this week?" she asked, and smiled meaningly as she caught Margaret's eye.
"No," said Ford. "I was looking for that, but there 's nothing."
"What woman was that?" inquired Margaret.
"Oh, a rotten business. A woman married a Kafir parson--a white woman. There 's been a bit of a row about it."
"Oh," said Margaret, understanding Mrs. Jakes' smile. "I didn't see the paper last week."
She looked at Mrs. Jakes with interest. Evidently the little woman saw the matter of Kamis, and Margaret's familiar acquaintance with him, as a secret with which she could be cowed, a piece of dark knowledge that would be held against her as a weapon of final resort. The fact did more than all Kamis' warnings and Boy Bailey's threats to enlighten her as to the African view of a white woman who had relations, any relations but those of employer and servant, with a black man. Not only would a woman in such a case expose herself to the brutal scandal that flourishes in the atmosphere of bars where Boy Baileys frame the conventions that society endorses, but she would be damned in the eyes of all the Mrs. Jakes in the country. They would tar and feather her with their contumely and bury her beneath their disgust.