swarm
of angry bees, and when I reached the lounge I had to push my way
through the crowd. They were all agitated American tourists who had
been unable to get anybody on the telephone. They were telling each
other about it while they waited their turn to besiege the desk and
complain that they were going to miss buses, and ships, and all sorts
of important appointments. Behind the desks were two pretty white
ladies, quite calm, slowly and without fluster permitting the tourists
to pay their bills and listening without emotion to their complaints.
Behind them was the switchboard, which they ignored, and sitting at the
switchboard was the cause of all the trouble; a raw native, barefoot
and very lightly clad. He looked as if he had stepped from the forest
for the first time that morning. Great round white bone circles filled
his stretched ear lobes. He was dreamily and idly plugging wires into
the board and pulling them out again, not caring what he did nor asking
himself why.
A furious old man just ahead of me waved his cane in the air and demanded loudly, "What's the matter here?"
One lady behind the desk said, "The proper switchboard boy isn't here today. That will be four pounds ten, please. Thank you."
Emulating
her admirable example, I remained calm. I went down to the corner store
and bought an apple for my breakfast: I don't know what all the other
guests did. By the time I had eaten it, the mine official who was to
show me over the Premier had arrived; he said we should be there rather
early and at a fixed time in order to get ahead of a tourist party.
Pretoria, through which we drove on our way, is a rather strange
capital city in that for the important part of the political year no
