But when he came back calmer he said no more to Tabitha about her
escapade.
It was a long while afterwards, at the beginning of the great drought,
that another terrible thing happened. On a certain calm and beautiful
day Tabitha, who still grew and flourished, had taken some of the
Christian children to a spot on the farther side of the koppie, where
stood an old fortification originally built for purposes of defence.
Here, among the ancient walls, with the assistance of the natives, she
had made a kind of summer-house as children love to do, and in this
house, like some learned eastern pundit in a cell, a very pretty pundit
crowned with a wreath of flowers, she sat upon the ground and instructed
the infant mind of Sisa-Land.
She was supposed to be telling them Bible stories to prepare them
for their Sunday School examination, which, indeed, she did with
embellishments and in their own poetic and metaphorical fashion. The
particular tale upon which she was engaged, by a strange coincidence,
was that from the Acts which narrates how St. Paul was bitten by a viper
upon the Island of Melita, and how he shook it off into the fire and
took no hurt.
"He must have been like Menzi," said Ivana, who was present, whereon
Tabitha's other attendant, who was also with her as it was daytime,
started an argument, for being a Christian she was no friend to Menzi,
whom she called a "dirty old witch-doctor.
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