In town the mosquitoes are plentiful and lively, devoting their attentions chiefly to new-comers, but up here—­I write as though we were five thousand feet instead of only fifty above Maritzburg—­it is rare to see one.  I think “fillies” are more in our line, and that in spite of every floor in the house being scrubbed daily with strong soda and water.  “Fillies,” you must know, is our black groom’s (Charlie’s) way of pronouncing fleas, and I find it ever so much prettier.  Charlie and I are having a daily discussion just now touching sundry moneys he expended during my week’s absence at D’Urban for the kittens’ food.  Charlie calls them the “lil’ catties,” and declares that the two small animals consumed three shillings and ninepence worth of meat in a week.  I laughingly say, “But, Charlie, that would be nearly nine pounds of meat in six days, and they couldn’t eat that, you know.”  Charlie grins and shows all his beautiful even white teeth:  then he bashfully turns his head aside and says, “I doan know, ma’:  I buy six’ meat dree time.”  “Very well, Charlie, that would be one shilling and sixpence.”  “I doan know, ma’;” and we’ve not got any further than that yet.

But G——­ and I are picking up many words of Kafir, and it is quite mortifying to see how much more easily the little monkey learns than I do.  I forget my phrases or confuse them, whereas when he learns two or three sentences he appears to remember them always.  It is a very melodious and beautiful language, and, except for the clicks, not very difficult to learn.  Almost everybody here speaks it a little, and it is the first thing necessary for a new-comer to endeavor to acquire; only, unfortunately, there are no teachers, as in India, and consequently you pick up a wretched, debased kind of patois, interlarded with Dutch phrases.  Indeed, I am assured there are two words, el hashi ("the horse"), of unmistakable Moorish origin, though no one knows how they got into the language.  Many of the Kafirs about town speak a little English, and they are exceedingly sharp, when they choose, about understanding what is meant, even if they do not quite catch the meaning of the words used.  There is one genius of my acquaintance, called “Sixpence,” who is not only a capital cook, but an accomplished English scholar, having spent some months in England.  Generally, to Cape Town and back is the extent of their journeyings, for they are a home-loving people; but Sixpence went to England with his master, and brought back a shivering recollection of an English winter and a deep-rooted amazement at the boys of the Shoe Brigade, who wanted to clean his boots.  That astonished him more than anything else, he says.