The Little Karoo
about his patience and his faith, and about the saints in the Bible. And she would say that she who ought to have married Peter had married Moses. My mother could never like Moses. Jacob also she hated, and I remember yet how she would make me cry when she read me the story of Esau crying for the blessing that Jacob had stolen. And yet though she was always quarrelling with my father about the saints in the Bible I know now that my mother was a good woman. It was her illness that made her so bitter and so unhappy, and so afraid for the future. We did not know that she was ill, but she knew, and the year that Paul Marais came she said many terrible things to my father and me, and not anything that we could do would please her. When Paul Marais asked me to marry him I thought at once how glad I should be to get away from my mother. Yes, I loved Paul with all my heart, and yet my love for him made me cruel towards my mother, and I thought that.
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