NOTHING more unlike a gladsome poppy of the field was ever seen than Poppy Destin, aged nine, washing a pile of dirty plates at the kitchen table.

Pale as a witch, the only red about her was where she dug her teeth into her lips. Her light lilac-coloured eyes were fierce with anger and disgust. Her hair hung in long black streaks over her shoulders, and her dark hands, thin and bony as bird's claws, were each decorated with a bracelet of greeny-yellowy grease.

There had been curry for dinner. Horrible yellow rings floated on the top of the water in the skottel and Poppy hated to put her hands into it.

She was hating her work more than usual that day because she was hungry as well as angry. She had slapped her little cousin Georgie for throwing a heavy hammer at her which had cut a gash in her leg; and her punishment for this crime had been two stinging boxes on the ear and sentence to go without food all day. Fortunately the incident had occurred after breakfast.

Once or twice she looked longingly at the scraps on the plates, but she did not touch them, because her aunt had eaten from one and she was not sure which, and she knew that to eat from anything her aunt had touched would choke her.

So she threw the scraps to Nick the black cat, under the kitchen table, and went on hating her aunt, and washing up the plates. She would have liked to smash each plate on the floor as she took it out of the water, and to have thrown all the greasy water over the freshly-scrubbed white shelves and dresser. And she would have done it too, only that she did not like boxes on the ear.

Presently she tried to fill her bitter little heart and her empty little stomach by going on with the story inside her head. She always had a story going on inside her head, and it was always about just two people—a beautiful lady and a man with a face like Lancelot. She used to begin at the end to make sure they should be quite happy, and when she had married them and they were living happily "ever after," she would go back to the beginning—how they met and all the sad things they had to go through before they could be married. Afterwards she would make a little song about them.

That day she had a heroine with red gold hair for the first time, because she had seen such a beautiful red-gold-haired lady in the street the day before, dressed in brown holland with a brown hat trimmed with pale green leaves. Poppy dressed her heroine in the same fashion, instead of the usual white velvet with a long train and a wreath of white roses resting on her hair. Just as Lancelot was telling the heroine that her eyes were as beautiful as brown wine, a harsh voice called out from the dining-room:

"Porpie! Haven't you done that washing-up yet? Make haste there! You know you got to smear the kitchen before you clean yourself and take the children up to the Kopje."

Poppy gritted her teeth and furious tears came into her eyes; her aunt's voice always seemed to scrape something inside her head and make it ache; also, she detested taking the children up to the Kopje. It was such a long way to carry Bobby—all up Fountain Street in the broiling sun—and she had to carry him, because if she put him into the pram with his twin, Tommy, they kicked each other and screamed, and when the children screamed, Aunt Lena always got to hear of it and boxed Poppy's ears for ill-treating them.

Listlessly she dried the plates and stuck them up in lines on the dresser, soaked the fadook and washed all round the edges of the bowl, making the water swirl round and round so that the grease would not settle again, then, while the water moved swiftly, carried the basin to the back door and emptied it with a great "swash" into the yard. The fowls flew shrieking in every direction and the water ran down in little rivers to where old Sara was doing some washing under the shade of the biggest acacia tree. When the little stream reached her bare black feet she clicked her teeth, crying, "Aah," and moved round to the other side of the stones on which she banged the clothes to make them white.

Poppy dried her basin out with the fadook, wiped the table dry, and put the bowl upside down upon it. Then she went into the yard again and approached an old pail which stood in the forage-house. It was full of an atrocious mess, slimy and thick, giving out a pungent odour that made her nose wrinkle in disgust. Nevertheless she took it up and carried it down to old Sara to get some soapy water. The old Basuto in her red kop-dook, rolled the whites of her eyes sympathetically and muttered in her native tongue as she watched Poppy stir the green slime with a stick. She was sorry for the child. She knew it was Kaffir's work to smear floors. Black hands are hard, and the little thorns and stones to be found in the wet cow-dung do not hurt them; neither does the pungent smell disgust black noses.

"But the old missis had strange ways! Clk! It seemed she liked the klein-missis to do Kaffir's work!" Old Sara shrugged her fat, wobbly shoulders, and flopped over her wash-tub once more.

Poppy went back to the kitchen. She had swept it just before dinner, now she sprinkled it heavily with water, then kneeling down on a folded sack beside the bucket, she rolled up her sleeves, closed her eyes, and plunged her hands into the sickening mess. Quickly she withdrew them, flinging two handfuls on to the floor and began to smear it with the flat of her right hand.

Kitchens and verandahs (or stoeps) in old-fashioned South African houses always have what are called "mud floors," which means that they are just mother-earth with all the stones picked out and the surface kept smooth and level by constant smearing in or pasting on of wet cow-dung once or twice a week. Smearing is a disgusting business, but joy comes after. When freshly dry the floor looks cool and green and fresh, and no longer does the mis smell vilely; rather, there is a soft odour of grasses and flowers, as though some stray veldt wind had blown through the room.

But Poppy had no time to enjoy the result of her labour. After she had spread sacks upon the floor to prevent feet from marking her work until it was dry, she stopped for a moment to dig out a thorn from her thumb with a needle, but immediately her aunt's menacing voice could be heard from the front stoep, where now she sat drinking her after-dinner cup of coffee with her husband, admonishing the slowness of Poppy's proceedings, and demanding that she should "makaste."

Poppy ran into the bedroom which she shared with her two elder cousins, and cleaned herself of all traces of her recent occupation. Later she appeared on the front stoep, in a print pinafore over her grey linsey dress, and an old straw hat much bitten at the edges shading her pale fierce little face.

"My word, that child looks more like an Irish Fenian every day!" was her aunt's agreeable greeting.

Weak, good-looking "Uncle Bob," who was really no more than a second cousin of Poppy's, laughed in a deprecating kind of way. He was cutting a twist of tobacco from a great roll that hung drying from the stoep roof.

"Och, you're always going on at the girl, Lena!"

"And good cause I have," retorted Mrs. Kennedy. "Stand still, Ina, while I tie your cappie."

Poppy said nothing, but if having black murder in your heart makes you a Fenian, she knew that she was one.

Silently she assisted her aunt to put their pinafores upon the struggling twins, and to array Ina in her cape and bib—all starched to stand about them like boards, to their everlasting misery and discomfort. Mrs. Kennedy gloated upon the fact that all the neighbours said, "How beautifully kept Mrs. Kennedy's children are!"

At last Tommy was in the pram; Bobby pranced astride on Poppy's small bony hip, and Ina, who was just four, clung toddling to her skirt. Thus Poppy set forth, pushing the pram before her.

"And mind you bring them in before sun-down, and don't let them sit on the damp grass—" was Mrs. Kennedy's last word shouted up the street after the procession.

A little lane lined with syringa trees led from the house and was shady and sweet to loiter in, but Fountain Street glared and blazed under the afternoon sun. Poppy was pale and sadly-coloured as some strange cellar-plant when at last she brought her charges to a halt by the Kopje. She put Bobby down from her hip with a bump, tilted the pram and let Tommy scramble out the best way he could, then sat down on a rock and covered her face with her hands.

Bobby was a heavy-weight, and though she changed him from one hip to another all the way up the street, she never got to the Kopje without a pain in her stomach and a feeling of deathly sickness.

Nearly all the children of the town came to the Kopje in the afternoons. It was only a slight hill, but it had bushes and clumps of mimosa trees, and little quarried-out holes and masses of rocks, and other fascinating features dear to children. The Kaffir-girl nurses squatted under the trees jabbering amongst themselves, and the children congregated in small herds. Poppy was the only white-girl nurse to be seen. She had a little circle of trees and stones where she always took her brood, and if she found anyone else in possession, she threw stones at them until they retreated.

When she had spread a rug for them to sit on, the children were left to amuse themselves in whatsoever fashion seemed good unto them. Poppy sat dreaming to herself, wrapped in the veils of poetry and romance. Near the Kopje was St. Michael's, a high school for girls kept by an English sisterhood, and when Poppy and her brood reached their haunt before three o'clock, she would see all the girls coming out of the gates, passing by in their nice dresses and hats with bags of books in their hands. They would stare at Poppy, and sometimes laugh; then the pain in her stomach would come into her throat and almost choke her. No one ever spoke to her. They knew quite well who she was, but she did Kaffir's work, and her clothes were old and ugly, and she was altogether a person to be despised and laughed at.

But sometimes a little ray of human friendliness would break through the hedge of snobbery. On this summer day a girl called Edie Wyllie, who used to sit next to her in Sunday-school, called out in quite a jolly way as she passed:

"Hullo, Poppy Destin!"

But her sister pulled at her arm at once and rebuked her.

"Edie! You know mother doesn't let us speak to Poppy Destin."

"Pooh!" called out Poppy with the utmost scorn and derision. "Who wants to speak to you? I hate you."

She made fearful faces at them; but when they had all gone past, she rocked on her stone and wept.

"I hate them! I hate them!" she sobbed. "And I hate God! God is a beast."

Ina stood by and listened, with her pinafore in her mouth.

"I'll tell mother that, what you say," she remarked gravely.

"'Tell-tale-tit, your tongue shall be slit.' Go away from me, else I'll beat you," shouted Poppy, and Ina ran for her life and hid behind some rocks. Poppy continued her weeping, dry-eyed now, but sobbing spasmodically.

Suddenly a voice behind her!

"What's the matter little girl?"

Turning round she saw that the beauteous lady in the holland dress was sitting on a stone opposite her, smiling kindly. Her hair was like sovereigns shining in the sunlight, Poppy thought.

"Do tell me what is the matter!"

"Nothing's the matter," said Poppy defiantly.

The lady laughed long and merrily as though she found something refreshing in the child's sulky misery.

"Well, but how silly of you to cry and make your eyes red for nothing! You've got such pretty eyes, too!"

Poppy stared at her, gasping.

"Oh! If I only thought I had pretty eyes—" she said breathlessly.

"Well, you have indeed. And they are most uncommon too—just the colour of lilac, and 'put in with a smutty finger' like an Irish girl's. Are you Irish?"

Poppy was about to inform her that she was a Fenian, but she thought better of it.

"I was born here in Bloemfontein," she answered.

"Well, perhaps your mother came from Ireland, for you have quite an Irish face: only you're so thin, and you look so cross—are you?"

"Yes. I am always cross. I hate everybody."

"Good heavens! What a little savage! but you shouldn't. It makes one so ugly to hate."

"Does it?" Eagerly. "Do you think if I was never cross I'd get beautiful?"

"You are much more likely to," said the other encouragingly, thinking in the meantime that nothing could ever make harmonious and beautiful that small tormented face.

"Is that why you are so beautiful?" was the next question.

The beauty smiled: a little complacently perhaps.

"I expect so. I am never cross and never unhappy, and I never mean to let anyone make me so." She opened her brown holland sunshade lined with sea-green silk and got up to go.

"Now be sure and remember that," she said pleasantly. "Never cry, never be unhappy, never hate anyone, and never be cross and—you'll see how beautiful you'll become."

"Oh, I will, I will," cried Poppy ardently.

"Now I must go," said the beautiful one. "I want to take one last walk round your pretty Bloemfontein, because I am going back to Cape Town to-morrow."

"Have you any little girls in Cape Town?" asked Poppy, wishing to detain her a little longer. She laughed at that.

"You funny child! Why I'm not even married. But I'm going to be, and to the most fascinating man in Africa."

"Is his name Lancelot?"

"No. His name is Nick Capron. How old are you, child?"

"Nine."

"Only nine! You look about thirteen, you poor little thing. Well, good-bye, I must really go."

"Good-bye; and thank you so much for speaking to me," Poppy stammered. She felt that she could adore the beautiful study in brown holland, who only laughed at her again and went on her way.

But Poppy, sitting on her rock had a gleam of hope and happiness; for at last she knew the secret of being beautiful; and—it had been told her—her eyes were pretty.

She sat thinking for a long time and making resolutions. She even determined to strive to hate Aunt Lena less. Minor resolutions were—not to be unkind to the children when they made her angry and told tales on her; not to quarrel with her two elder cousins, Clara and Emily; not to scratch them and beat them with her fists when they called her Foelstruis,[1] because her legs were so long and thin; not to fly into awful rages in which she could not speak, only shake all over and bite her hands and lips till the blood came; not to sit and think of Aunt Lena's ways until a red curtain came down before her eyes and her heart felt like a red-hot coal burning her to death.

These were a few of the terrible obstacles in the path to beauty which she set herself to overcome. There were other arts, too, she would practise to the same end. She would brush her hair until it sprang into waves, even as the hair of the beautiful one in brown. She would cut her eyelashes, as Clara did, to make them thick and long. She would run and jump, even when she was tired, to make her body strong and her cheeks pink. She would walk upright, even when she had the pain in her stomach, so that she might grow tall and graceful. Furthermore, she would find out from old Sara where that wonderful milky cactus grew, which the young Basuto girls gathered and rubbed upon their breasts in the moonlight to make them grow round and firm as young apples.

Last, but most important of all, she evolved from her dreamings and devisings a promise to herself that she would never, never do mean things, for meanness she surely knew to be the friend of hideousness. Meanness showed in the face. Could not anyone see it in Aunt Lena's face? The traces of mean thoughts and deeds showed in the narrow space between her eyebrows, in the specks in her pale eyes, were brushed into her sleek, putty-coloured hair and crinkled her coarse thick hands. If you only looked at the freckles and loose skin all round her wrists, her fat fingers and the way her ears stuck out, you must see how cruel and hateful she could be, thought Poppy. Whereupon, forgetting the greatest of her resolutions in a moment, she fell to hating her Aunt Lena again with a particular malignancy. But presently she noticed that the trees were casting long giant shadows towards the town, pansy-coloured clouds were in the sky, and a certain dewiness had come into the air. Hastily collecting the children she departed with them. In the same order as they came, they returned home down the long white street.

---

But it was hard in the house of Aunt Lena Kennedy to attain beauty through virtue.

On Saturdays Poppy even forgot that she had ever made resolutions to that end. Upon that day of days, Mrs. Kennedy subjected her house and all that therein was to a scrubbing in which there was no niggardliness of what she termed "elbow grease." Poppy was not exempt; her turn came at ten o'clock at night; and that was the hour of shame and rage for Poppy. When all the rest of the children were comfortably in bed, sucking their weekly supply of lekkers, Mrs. Kennedy would roll up her sleeves and approach in a workmanlike manner the big pan-bath in the middle of the kitchen, wherein stood Poppy, lank, thin-limbed, and trembling—but not with cold—under the scrutiny of the speckled eyes she hated so well.

"Ah! you bad-tempered little cat!" was the usual preliminary; "why can't you be grateful to me for taking the trouble to keep you clean? It isn't every aunt by marriage who would do it, I can tell you. I suppose you'd like to go about with the dirt ingrained in you! What are you shivering and cringing like that for? Are you ashamed of your own body?"

"It is horrible to be naked, aunt," she would retort, striving to keep tears from bursting forth and full of apprehension that someone might come into the wide-open kitchen doors.

"Horrible! what's horrible about it, I'd like to know, except in your own nasty little mind? A body like a spring-kaan,[2] that's what you've got ... and don't want me to see it, I suppose! Dirty pride! the ugliest child I've ever seen ... the longest legs ... and the skinniest arms ... look what nice fat arms Clara and Emily's got! ... one would think you never got enough to eat ... pass me that other arm."

With a rough flannel and blue mottled soap she scoured Poppy's body and face as if it had been the face of a rock; scrubbing and rubbing until the skin crackled like a fire beneath her vigorous hand. Later came a scraping down with a bath towel made of something of the same fibre as a door-mat. At last Poppy crept to her bed, her eyes like pin-points in her head from the scalding of the strong soap; her hair strained back from her sore, glazed face and plaited as tightly as possible into two pig-tails behind her ears.

On such nights she was far enough from the beauty she so much coveted. To herself she appeared hideous—hideous. It gave her pain to look at herself in the glass. And she believed that her aunt made her hideous with malignant intent. Her cousins had their hair loosely plaited, and it hung nicely over their faces, and they had frills to their nightgowns. Poppy's nightgown of unbleached calico had a tight narrow neck-band that nearly strangled her when buttoned with a linen button the size of a small saucer.

Those were the nights when a thousand devils ate at her heart and fought within her, and she knew she could never be beautiful. She would lie awake for hours, just to loathe her aunt and concoct tortures for her. In imagination she cut slits in that hated body and filled them with salt and mustard, or anything that would burn; dug sharp knives into the cruel heart; saw the narrow hard face lying on the floor and beat into it with a hammer until it was red, red, red—and everything was red.

"Scorpion! Scorpion!" she would rave.

Worn out at last and half asleep she would choke and groan and bite her pillow, thinking she had her enemy under her hands, until her cousins in their big bed across the room would call out:

"Ma! I wish you would come and speak to Miss Poppy here. She's calling you a 'scorpion'!"

The chances were that Mrs. Kennedy, in no pleasant temper after all her exertions, would fly into the room, tear down the bedclothes, and administer two or three stinging slaps on Poppy's bare body, crying out upon her for an ungrateful, vile-tempered little fagot.

"You want a sjambok round you, that's what you want, my lady, and you'll get it one of these days. I shan't go on with you in this patient way for ever."

"I won't have a sjambok used on a child in my house," Uncle Bob would mutter in the dining-room, asserting himself in this one matter at least.

But Clara and Emily would jeer from their beds, calling her Miss Poppy in fine derision.

"Now you've got it! How did you like that, hey? Lekker, hey?"

Some time after midnight Poppy would weep herself to sleep.

---

Once Poppy used to go to St. Gabriel's Infant School, where she had learned to read and write; but when the twins arrived in the world, Aunt Lena could no longer spare her from home, and her education languished for three years. But at last there came a letter from her god-mother in Port Elizabeth saying that she had sent five pounds to St. Michael's Home, asking the Sisters to give Poppy as much education as possible for that sum.

Poppy was wild with delight. It had been beyond her wildest dreams to go to St. Michael's and learn all sorts of wonderful things with all the grand children of Bloemfontein. She could not believe that such joy was to be hers. Mrs. Kennedy made great objections to the scheme, and seemed likely to get her way until her husband took the trouble to insist. So Poppy went off one morning full of hope and high ambition, in a clean, very stiffly starched overall of faded galatea, her old straw hat freshly decorated with a yellow pugaree that hung in long tails down her back.

But school was only the beginning of a fresh era of misery. The girls stared at her old boots and sneered at her pugaree, and no one would be friends with her because she wore white cotton stockings, which were only sixpence a pair, and sold to Kaffir girls to wear on Sundays.

Poppy gave back sneer for sneer and taunt for taunt with great versatility; but her heart was sometimes near bursting under the galatea overall. It seemed to her that even the teachers despised her because of her shabbiness and ugliness, and that when she worked hard at her lessons she got less praise than the pretty girls. "Yes! it's because I'm ugly, and everything I wear is ugly," she whispered to herself as she walked home alone every day, hurrying because she knew the children would be dressed and ready, waiting to be taken to the Kopje as soon as she had bolted her cold dinner. Clara's and Emily's dinner was always kept hot. They went to the Dames' Institute, another school of some importance where all the nice high Dutch Boers sent their children: and they got home at two o'clock. Mrs. Kennedy said she would keep no dinner hot later than that hour, so that Poppy, arriving at three, found her stewed mutton cold in a dish of fatty gravy, and sometimes a bit of cold suet pudding. She would always have "filled up" contentedly enough with bread, but Mrs. Kennedy grumbled when too much bread was eaten, as she only baked once a week.

Sometimes, when Poppy had been very unhappy at school, she used to stop at the Kopje instead of hurrying home, so that she could cry without being spied on by Ina or the twins. She would lie down among the rocks and the kind green leaves, and moan and cry out against God and everybody in the world. Her little songs and stories seemed to have died in her heart and been buried. She would call out to God that He might have let her have something—a kind mother, or golden hair, or brains, or a white skin, or a happy home, or something; it wouldn't have hurt Him, and it would have made all the difference to her. Later she passed from argument to anger and from anger to frenzy; shouting at the sky because she was ugly and poor and horrible within as well as without, so that no one loved her and she hated everyone.

At last, tired out, hopeless, sick with bitter crying, she would lay her head against an old mimosa tree that had a curve in its trunk like the curve of a mother's arm, and the soft odour of the fluffy round yellow blossoms would steal over her. Later, a land of peace and strength seemed to come out of the tree to her, and she would have courage to get up and go on her way.

One of the teachers, Miss Briggs, was always scolding her about her hands. She would draw the attention of the whole class to them, covering Poppy with shame. They were not big hands like Clara's and Emily's but they were rough and coarse with housework and through being continually in the water washing stockings and handkerchiefs and plates; and in the winter they got horribly chapped, with blood marks all over them, so that the teachers couldn't bear to see them and the girls used to say "Sis!" when she reached for anything. Her nails, too, were often untidy, and her hair. She never had time in the mornings to give it more than just one brush and tie it back in her neck, and she used to have to clean her nails with a pin or a mimosa thorn while she was hurrying to school, learning her lessons on the way. It was the only time she had to learn them, except in the afternoons when she took the children out. If they were good and would stay happy, she could get out her books from under the pram seat and learn; but almost immediately Ina would want to be played with, or Georgie would fall down and hurt himself and whimper in her arms for half an hour. The fact was that the children had been brought up to believe that Poppy was in the world entirely for their comfort and convenience, and they could not bear to see her doing anything that was not for them.

"I'll tell ma," was their parrot cry: and that meant boxes on the ear.

"I up with my hand" was a favourite phrase of Aunt Lena's.

In the evenings Ina must always be sung to sleep, and sometimes would not go off for more than an hour. Then Mrs. Kennedy would say briskly:

"Now get your lessons done, Porpie!"

But by then Poppy's head would be aching and her eyes would hardly keep open, and what she did learn would not stay in her head until the next morning.

And after all, none of the teachers seemed to care much whether she learned them or not. If by accident she did them well, she got no praise; if she did them ill she was scolded and the lesson was "returned"—that meant being kept in on Friday afternoons until the lesson had been learnt or rewritten. But when Friday afternoon came, Poppy could not stay; there were the children to be taken out, and her ears would be boxed if she were too late to do that; she would get no tea, and the whole house would be thoroughly upset. So the "returned" lessons had to go to the wall. She would slink home when supposed to be taking recreation in the play-ground before the "returned" bell rang. That meant bad conduct marks, unpopularity with the teachers, and as the deserted Fridays mounted up—all hope lost of gaining a prize. After a while the teachers said she was incorrigible, and gave her no more attention.

"I wonder you bother to come to school at all, Poppy," was the favourite gibe of Miss Briggs.

When examination days came she did badly, except in history and geography, which she liked and found easy.

Break-up day was the worst of all.

The girls all came in their pretty soft white frocks and looked sweet. Only Poppy was ugly, in a piquÉ frock, starched like a board, her hair frizzed out in a bush, her pale face looking yellow and sullen against the over-blued white dress; her long legs and her narrow feet longer and narrower than ever in white stockings and elastic-sided boots.

There was never any prize for her.

She knew there never would be. She used to keep saying inside herself:

"Of course there isn't a prize for you"; and yet she was so silly, her ears were cracking and straining all the time to hear her name read out of the list. And her heart used to feel like a stone when the list came to an end without her name being called; and her pale face would be strangely red and burning like fire. Sometimes a little extra piece would be read, that Poppy Destin's historical essay or geography paper was the best, but the prize had been passed on to the second best on account of this girl's disobedience, untidiness, and the number of undone returned lessons against her name. Then everybody would look at Poppy Destin, and her heart would stop so still that she believed she must fall down dead in one minute.

But the entertainment would go on. The girls fetched their prizes from the table covered with lovely books, and curtseyed to Lady Brand, who spoke and smiled to each one of them. Afterwards would come the recitations and songs that everyone joined in but Poppy. She had been turned out of the singing-class because she sang off the key. Also, Sister Anna said, she moaned instead of singing; though Poppy was aware that she had lovely tunes going on inside her head all the time. It must have been true about the moaning, for Ina used to say when Poppy sang to her at nights:

"Your songs always sound just's if you are crying all the time, Poppy."

She loved music, but was not allowed to learn it. Clara learned and Emily could have if she had liked, but Aunt Lena said she couldn't afford those "frills" for Poppy. Once a lady named Mrs. Dale offered to teach the child if she could be spared two afternoons a week, and Poppy begged her uncle to let her go. He shook his head.

"You must ask your aunt if she can spare you, Poppy."

"Spare her!" shrieked Mrs. Kennedy. "Isn't she away all day now? What help do I get from her, I'd like to know? and now she wants to go gadding off in the afternoons, the only time she can be of a little use to take the children off my hands. Music indeed! Gadding with Nellie Dale is more like it."

"Only twice a week, uncle," pleaded Poppy.

"My girl, you must do what your aunt thinks best. Can't you spare her two afternoons a week, Lena?"

"Oh, let her go ... fine musician she'll make, I'm sure," said that lady. And for two weeks Poppy went. Then Mrs. Kennedy, storming and raving, refused to let her go again. She missed her slave; so Poppy went back to the old life of weariness; but she had something new to think over. Mrs. Dale had known her mother quite well, and remembered Poppy as a baby.

"You were a sweet little thing," she said. "So beautifully kept, and the apple of your mother's eye."

This was most wonderful and shining news. Any illusions Poppy might have had about her mother had long since been scattered by such remarks from her aunt as:

"Your mother ought to be alive. She'd have skinned you for your dirtiness—your deceit, your laziness" (whatever the crime might be).

Or:

"It's a good thing your mother's lying cold in her grave, my girl—she would have had murder on her soul if she had had you to deal with."

Now, to hear that her mother had been a gentle and kind woman, not beautiful, but with wonderful Irish eyes and "a laugh like a bird's song!"

"Clever, too," said Mrs. Dale. "Though she was only a poor Irish girl and came out here with the emigrants, she had a lot of learning, and had read more books than anyone in Bloemfontein. I think the priests must have educated her."

"But why has no one ever told me before?" asked Poppy in amazement. "No one speaks of her, or of my father, to me! Why?"

Mrs. Dale shook her gentle head.

"Ah well, my dear, she's at rest now and your wild Irish father too. Her heart broke when he broke his neck somewhere down on the diamond diggings, and she didn't want to live any longer, even for you—her Poppy-flower she always called you. One day, when I went to see her, she said to me, looking at you with those eyes of hers that were like dewy flowers: 'Perhaps my little Poppy-flower will get some joy out of life, Mrs. Dale. It can't be for nothing that Joe and I have loved each other so much. It must bring some gift to the child.' And she told me that the reason she had called you Poppy was that in Ireland they have a saying that poppies bring forgetfulness and freedom from pain; but then she took to weeping, that weeping that is like lost melodies, and that only the Irishry know.

"'But I see,' she wailed, 'that she's marked out for sorrow—I see it—I see it.' And three nights after that she died."

This was Mrs. Dale's story. Poppy treasured it in her heart with the verbal picture of her mother, "eyes like a dewy morning, black, black hair, and a beautiful swaying walk."

"It must have been like hearing one of those old Irish melodies played on a harp, to see her walk along the street," was the thought Poppy evolved from Mrs. Dale's description.

After that she never found life quite unlovely again. But she longed to hear more, and whenever she could, even at the risk of curses and blows, she would steal to kind Mrs. Dale for another word. How ardently she wished her mother had lived. How unutterably beautiful to be called Poppy-flower! instead of Porpie! Her mother would have understood, too, the love and craving for books which had seized her since she had more learning. She would not have been obliged to creep into the fowls' hok or the forage-house when she wanted to read some book she had borrowed or found lying about the house, or the old Tennyson which she had rescued from the ash-heap one day and kept hidden under the chaff-bags in the forage-house.

"There's that Porpie with a book again!" was her aunt's outraged cry. "Lazy young huzzy! For ever squatting with her nose poked into a book reading some wickedness or foolishness I'll be bound.... Anything rather than be helpful ... no wonder your face is yellow and green, miss ... sitting with your back crooked up instead of running about or doing some housework ... more to your credit if you got a duster and polished the dining-room table or mended that hole in the leg of your stocking." Oh, the thousands of uninteresting things there are to be done in the world! thought Poppy. The dusters and damnations of life!

---

She used to long to be taken ill so that she might have a rest in bed and be able at last to read as much as she liked. But when she broke her arm she was too ill to care even about reading, and when she got scarlet fever she could not really enjoy herself, for Ina sickened of it too, and was put into bed with her, and was so fretful, always crying unless she was told stories or sung to. So they got better together and that was over.

Before she was twelve Poppy's schooldays came to an end. The five sovereigns had been spent and there was no more to come. Wasted money, Mrs. Kennedy said, and wrote and told the god-mother so. The fact that never a single prize had been won was damning evidence that the culprit was both idle and a dunce. It was quite true that she had learnt nothing much in the way of lessons. History and geography or anything with a story in it, or poetry, were the only things that interested her. Grammar and arithmetic were nothing but stumbling-blocks in her path, though she never spoke bad grammar, being quick to detect the difference in the language of her teachers and that of her aunt, and profiting by it, and she learned to use her voice as they did too—softly and low—never speaking the half-Dutch, half-English patter used by Mrs. Kennedy and her children to the accompaniment of "Och, what?" "Hey?" and "Sis!" Her Uncle Bob had a sweet way of turning his words in his lips, which made even the kitchen-Dutch pleasant to the ear, and with great delight Poppy discovered one day that she also had this trick. Not for years however, did she realise that this was Ireland in her tongue; her country's way of marking Bob Kennedy and Poppy Destin as her own, in spite of Africa.

Her ear was fine for beautiful sounds and her aunt's voice scraped the inside of her head more and more as time went on, and whenever the latter dropped an "h" Poppy picked it up and stored it in that dark inner cupboard of hers where was kept all scorn and contempt.

She never made a remark herself without thinking it first and deciding how it was going to sound, so afraid was she of getting to speak like her aunt. Often she used to practise talking, or recite to herself when she thought no one was listening, but when overheard, fresh sneers were thrown at her.

"Was she going daft then? ... speaking to herself like a crazy Hottentot ... concocting impudence, no doubt ... the lunatic asylum was her place ... and don't let me hear you again, my lady, or I'll up with my hand ... etc."

One day Ina fell very ill, and Mrs. Kennedy sent a messenger flying for the doctor. When he came he shook his head gravely, and after a week or two announced that the child had dropsy. It sometimes followed on scarlet fever, he said ... especially if the child had taken cold ... probably she had been sitting on the damp ground. At once Mrs. Kennedy's imagination conjured up a picture of Ina sitting on a damp stone on the Kopje while Poppy amused herself reading a book. That was quite enough to convince her as to who was the cause of the child's illness. Thereafter she never ceased to reproach Poppy with this new crime.

"If it hadn't been for your wicked carelessness, my child wouldn't be lying at death's door now," was her eternal cry, followed by a long list of all the sins and offences committed by Poppy since first the affliction of her presence had fallen upon the Kennedys' home.

"A thorn in my side, that's what you've been ever since I first set eyes on your yellow face.... I don't know what God lets such beasts as you go on living for ... no good to anyone ... dirty, deceitful little slut ... nose always in a book ... muttering to yourself like an Irish Fenian ... ill-treating my children.... Your mother ought to have been alive, that's what ... she would have learned you ... etc."

A fresh offence was that little Ina would have no one else with her but the despised and evil one. The cry on her lips was always, "Poppy, Poppy—come, Poppy!"

She lay in her cot, white and swollen, and marbly-looking, and at first the doctor steamed her incessantly; a wire cage covered with blankets over her body, a big kettle, with its long spout stuck into the cage, boiling at the foot of the bed. She would moan and fret at the heat and Poppy had to be singing to her always; even fairy tales she would have sung to her. One day the doctor cut three slits in the instep of each poor little foot while she lay in Poppy's arms, clinging and wailing, and Poppy, quivering and sick, watched the sharp little knife and the water spouting out almost up to the ceiling—no blood came. After that, all Ina's marbly look was gone, and it was plain to see that she was nothing but a little white skeleton; and so weak she could hardly whisper to Poppy to sing to her—"There's a Friend for little children," and "Snow-white and Rose-red"—her favourite hymn and her favourite fairy-tale.

It had never occurred to Poppy that the child would die; but one day the doctor stood a long time watching her as she lay staring straight at the ceiling with her pretty brown eyes all glazy, and her little ghost hands clutching the bars of her cot, and presently he shrugged his shoulders in a hopeless way and turned to Mrs. Kennedy.

"I thought we might save her as she was so young, but——"

---

Then he went away and did not come so often after. And day by day Ina grew thinner and whiter, and her eyes got bigger and shone more, and she never made a sound except to whisper, "Poppy—sing, Poppy."

Poppy's voice had gone to a whisper too, then, and she could only make strange sounds in her throat; but Ina did not notice that.

The whole family used to creep into the room and stand round the cot, while Poppy sat there with Ina's hand in hers, whispering songs between the bars of the cot, while her head felt as though there were long sharp needles running through it, and her throat and body were full of horrible pains. Sometimes the room seemed all cloudy and she only faintly saw dead faces through the dimness; Ina and she whispering together seemed to be the only alive people in the world.

Even Aunt Lena's tongue was still those days, and forgot to abuse, but sometimes when Ina turned away from her, moaning for Poppy, the mother's eyes could be seen gleaming malignantly across the cot. Poppy glared back, for she had come to love little Ina so passionately that she could hardly bear anyone else to come near. No one had ever wanted Poppy and loved her before, and from her gratitude sprang a deep love for the sick child. All through the day she sat by the cot, even taking her food there, and at night she slept wrapt in a blanket on the floor or sitting in a chair by the bed.

---

One evening at nine o'clock Ina died.

Poppy had been singing a little Boer love song to her in a dreadful rustling voice, with face pressed against the cold bars and eyes shut, when she heard a gentle sigh that seemed to pass over her face like soft white feathers. She left off singing and peered down into the cot. The room was very dim, but she could see the little white face with the soft damp rings of hair round it, lying very still and with eyes closed.

"Ina," she whispered with a dreadful fear. "Ina, speak to Poppy—open eyes, darling."

But Ina never opened eyes or spoke again.

---

Immediately Mrs. Kennedy filled the house with her lamentations, and mingled with them were cursings and revilings of Poppy. She would kill her, she shrieked, even as her child had been killed by that cursed Irish Fenian. She was raving mad for the time, and no doubt she would have killed Poppy, or attempted it, if her husband had not been there to keep her by main force from violence. But that Poppy should be driven from the house she insisted.

"She shall not sleep under my roof with that innocent little corpse," she screamed. "Go, go out of the house, brute and beast and devil." And breaking loose from her husband's hands she caught hold of the ghost-like child and flung her into the yard.

When Poppy got up from the ground it was late and the door was shut for the night. The world was black save for a few pale stars. She wondered heavily where she could go and lie down and sleep. She was like a man who has walked unceasingly for hundreds of miles. She could think of nothing but sleep. She groped for the forage-house door, thinking how sweet it would be to rest there on the bundles of forage, with the smell of the pumpkins coming down from the roof, where they were ripening; but the door was locked. The fowl-hok swarmed with lice in the summer; even in her weariness her flesh crept at the thought of spending the night there. She remembered the Kopje and her old friend the mimosa tree, but there was a certain gloom about the Kopje on a dark night. At last she thought of the poplar trees by the Big Dam; they were her friends—all trees were her friends. When her heart hurt her most and her eyes seemed bursting from her head because she could not cry, if she could get close to a tree and press against it, and put the leaves to her eyes, some of her misery seemed to be taken away: thoughts and hopes would come into her mind, she could forget what had made her unhappy and her little songs would begin to make themselves heard.

When she broke her arm she used to cry all night for them to put green leaves on the place to stop the aching, but they would not. Only the doctor, when he heard about it, brought her a bunch of geranium leaves one morning. She put them quickly under her pillow and when no one was there laid them down by her side, because she could not get them under the splints, and they eased the pain, until they were withered and "Aunt Lena" found them in the bed and threw them away: then the pain was as bad as ever.

The poplar trees grew in a long line of thirty or so by the side of the Big Dam which lay just outside the town past the Presidency. Poppy was sometimes allowed to take the children there, when Clara and Emily went to help mind the children, in case they climbed up the dam wall and fell into the water. They were tall, grand trees, that never ceased rustling in the breeze that crept across the big expanse of water, even on the hottest days. Poppy had climbed every one of them, and she never forgot the moment of pure gold joy that she felt when she reached the top of each and sat there silent and afar from the world, cloistered round by the mysteriously whispering leaves. But the seventh tree was her specially loved friend. It belonged to her—and she had climbed to its very tip, higher than anyone ever had before, and cut her name in the soft pale bark.

And this was the friend she turned to on that night of dreadful weariness when Ina died.

She never knew how she got through the town, silent and dark, and over the little hill thick with bessie bushes and rocks that lay between the Dames' Institute and the Presidency. She did not even remember climbing the tree, which had a thick smooth trunk and was hard to get up for the first six or seven feet. But at last she was in her seat at the top between two branches, cuddling up to the mother-trunk with her arms round it and her eyes closed.

Then, even though her heart took comfort, the darkness and strange sounds of the night terrified her, and filled her with dread and despair. There were wild ducks flying and circling in long black lines against the pallid stars over the dam, wailing to each other as though they had lost something they could never, never find again. And the wind on the water made a dreary pattering that sounded like the bare feet of hundreds of dead people who had come out of the graveyards close by, and were hurrying backwards and forwards on the dam. Then there would be a mysterious rushing through the trees and all the leaves would quiver and quake against each other, like little ghosts that were afraid to be out in the dark night. Poppy wondered if Ina's little ghost was with them.

In the highest windows of the Dames' Institute there were still a few lights showing, and a dim red glow came from a window at one end of the Presidency, and when Poppy opened her eyes these seemed like friends to her. But they went out one by one, and with the last, light seemed to go out of her mind too. She shut her eyes again, and pressed her heart against the poplar tree, and called through the darkness to her mother. She did not know whether she really called aloud, but it seemed to her that a long thin shriek burst from her lips, as a bullet bursts from a gun, piercing through the air for miles.

"Mother! Mother! Mother, my heart is breaking." She sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, gripping the little ghostly leaves and pressing them to her eyes. But her mother did not come, of course. No one came. Only the little ghostly leaves shivered more than ever and the dreary dead feet came pattering over the water. At this time a sweet, sad cadence of words streamed into Poppy's head and began to form a little song. Strange, that though its burden was misery and wretchedness, it presently began to comfort her a little.

"My heart is as cold as a stone in the sea"—it ran.

Yet Poppy had never seen the sea.

Everyone in the world seemed to be sleeping except the dead people and Poppy. Even the clock in the Government buildings struck as though muffled up in blankets, speaking in its sleep. When it was striking she raised her head to listen and count the strokes, and forgetting the horror of the night opened her eyes—and beheld a terrible, shroudy vision creeping over the world. It came very slowly and stealthily, like a grey witch in a tale of horror, and ate up little patches of darkness as it came, swelling larger as it ate. Oh! the dead people swaying to and fro on the water! She prayed they might be gone back to their graves before the grey witch reached them with her long, clutching fingers; she prayed in a frenzy of fear for herself, calling to Christ and Mary Mother of God, to save her from the grey witch. She rocked herself backwards and forwards, praying and moaning, and almost falling from the tree, and at last in reckless desperation opened her eyes, and glared out over the dam—and saw that the dawn had come. The grey witch had turned into a lovely lady, all decked in palest pink, with her arms spread wide in the sky, trailing long veils of sheeny lavender cloud behind her.

---

A man and a boy with guns in their hands were creeping along under the dam wall, trying to get near a covey of wild duck on the water. Presently they stopped, and crouching, took aim and fired. The birds rose in a swarm and flew shrieking in long black lines, leaving two poor little black bodies on the dam—one flapping the water with a feeble wing, trying to rise, and falling back every time. The boy threw off his clothes and went in after them, while the man drew under the shadow of the dam wall, and began to run, making for the far side of the water, where the ducks seemed likely to settle again.

Presently the lady of the sky grew brighter and streaks of gold came into her pink and lavender veils; the grass was all silvery with the heavy dew, and the earth gave up a sweet and lovely smell. God seems to go away from Africa at night, but He comes back most beautiful and radiant in the morning. Birds began to chirrup and twitter in the trees and bushes, and take little flying journeys in the air. The clock struck five—clear and bell-like strokes now, that sang and echoed out into the morning.

Poppy felt cold and stiff and hungry, and very tired, as though she should fall down and die if she stayed in the tree any longer.

There was nothing to do, and nowhere to go but home. After all, Aunt Lena could only kill her once. Then she would join Ina and see her mother, and hear Irish melodies, and be where it was not cold or lonely any more. She got down from the tree almost cheerfully and made her way through the grass, plucking a few crase bessies by the way and munching them as she walked. There was hardly anyone about the town, except a few boys carrying pails of water from the fountain. When she reached home, she found that the house was still shut and locked, with all the blinds down. So she sat on the kitchen step and waited until old Sara, coming out to get wood for the fire, nearly fell over her.

"Tch! Tch! Tch!" she clucked. "Arme kentze! War vas sig gisterand?" (Poor child! Where were you last night?)

"Dar bij de dam. Ge koffi O'Sara. Ik is freeslik kow." (Up by the Big Dam. Give me some coffee, Sara. I am very cold.)

"Jah! Jah!" said old Sara, and hurried away, clucking and muttering, to make the fire and get the morning coffee. Poppy went in and warmed herself, and presently got down the cups and beakers and stood them in a row on the kitchen table. Cups and saucers for aunt and uncle and Clara and Emily, and beakers for the children. Old Sara poured them full of steaming black coffee, added milk and sugar and a home-made rusk in each saucer, and carried them away to the bedrooms. Poppy sat down with a beaker full, dipping a rusk into the coffee and eating it sopped, because the rusks are too hard to eat any other way. Presently old Sara came and squatted on her haunches by the fire too, drinking her coffee from a white basin with a blue band round it (blue that it gave Poppy a pain to look at, it was so cold and livid), and making fearful squelching noises, she sopped and ate. Rolling her big black and white eyes at Poppy, she whispered all that had happened after she had gone. Aunt Lena had screamed and cried for hours, raving that she would not have her child's murderess in the house again. She could go and live in the fowls' hok, or the forage-house, until another home was found for her, but if Poppy came into her sight again, she would tear her limb from limb. Afterwards she had coughed and spat up blood. Old Sara wagged her head, giving this piece of information as one who should say: "Serve her right, too." The doctor had come and said that "something was broken inside." Old Sara patted her wobbly stomach. "She must go to bed and not move for a month or she would go too." Old Sara pointed sanctimoniously upwards.

It was even so. Aunt Lena lay for weeks on her bed, but still ruling her house from it. Poppy was not allowed to eat or sleep under the house roof. A blanket was given to her, and she slept on the bales of chaff in the out-house with a bundle of forage for a pillow. Old Sara brought to her there such meals as she was allowed to receive.

The twins were not allowed to speak to her: a strange girl was hired to take them out—Poppy did not mind that. Clara and Emily passed her in the yard as though she was a jackal or some unclean beast—she minded that even less. The only thing she minded at all, was not being allowed to see Ina before she was buried.

On the day of the funeral, the little cold form in the coffin was not more cold and numb than one lying out in the out-house between two bales of chaff. Despair of mourning had Poppy by the throat. She could have wailed like a banshee. Indeed, if her voice had not gone from her, it is probable that she would have relieved the pressure on her heart and brain in this fashion. As it was, she was the only person in the place who gave no outward sign of mourning. Her old blue galatea overall, with the pattern worn faint in front, and the sleeves in rags, might have grown to her back. But old Sara was given a dark dress of Aunt Lena's, and a new black dook to wear on her head. Clara and Emily had new black alpaca dresses, with tucks round the bottom and black ribbon sashes. Eight little girls came dressed in white, with their hair down and long floating white muslin veils hanging behind, and bunches of white flowers in their hands. They were to carry the coffin in turns, four carrying and four walking behind, because it was a very long way to the graveyard. Mr. Kennedy and Georgie and Bobby walked behind them, and then a great many men. But the saddest mourner of all watched from the crack of the forage-house door, and thought how sad and beautiful it all was, and how it would have been spoilt if she had gone out and joined it in her blue overall; and after the procession was out of sight, lay there on her face on the chaff, and could not cry; and seemed to have swallowed a stone, that stuck in her throat and gave her dreadful pains all across her chest; and whose heart kept saying: "I hate God! I hate aunt!" And when she tried to scream it aloud, found that she had no voice.

In the evening when the sun was set, but before it was dark, a figure stole out of the back yard, crept through the empty spruit, slipped through a private garden and came out by the cathedral steps; then up past the big church bell that tolled for the dead, and so to the graveyard.

All the way she gathered wild flowers and grasses—rock-maiden-hair, rooi gras, moon-flowers, and most especially shivery-grass, and the little perky rushes with a flower sprouting out of them, which the children call tulps. Ina had always loved these. Some "four o'clocks" too, stolen from a front garden as she passed, were added, and even a stink bloem graced the great bunch with which Poppy entered the churchyard.

She found a new little heap of red earth that she knew must be Ina's grave, for it was all covered with wreaths and the bunches of flowers the eight girls had carried. Scraping them all to the foot of the grave, Poppy laid hers where she thought Ina's hands would be, whispering down through the earth:

"From Poppy, Ina—Poppy who loves you best of all."

---

Some nights old Sara would come sneaking softly over to the forage-house, to sit a while with Poppy; sometimes she had a rusk to give the prisoner; most often she had nothing but an end of candle, but that was very welcome. Lighting it, and sticking it on a side beam, she would squat on the floor, and taking off her dook, proceed to comb her wool. Poppy was glad of company, and interested in the frank way old Sara attended to the business of catching and killing her chochermanners; besides, there were a lot of interesting things in old Sara's wool besides chochermanners: there was a little bone box full of snuff, and a little bone spoon to put it in the nose with; and a piece of paper with all old Sara's money in it; and a tooth belonging to old Sara's mother, and several small home-made bone combs and pins and charms.

Old Sara's Dutch was poor, and Poppy could not speak Basuto, so that much conversation did not ensue, but black people can tell a great deal without saying much.

Once Poppy asked her why she did not go to her kraal and live with her children instead of working for white people.

Old Sara took snuff and answered briefly:

"Ek het nÊ kinders, oor Ek is ne getroud." (I have no children, because I am not married.)

This was good, but not infallible logic, as Poppy even in her few years had discovered.

"Why didn't you get married when you were young, old Sara?" she queried.

Old Sara rolled her eyes mournfully at the child, and muttered some words in her own language. Then slowly she undid the buttons of many kinds and colours which adorned the front of her dress. From the left bosom she took a large bundle of rags, and placed them carefully on the floor, then opening her bodice wide, she revealed her black body bare to the waist. Poppy's astonished gaze fell upon a right breast—no object of beauty, but large and heavy; but where the left breast should be was only a little shrivel of brown skin high up out of line with the other.

That was old Sara's only answer to Poppy's question. Afterwards she quietly replaced her bundle of rags, and rebuttoned her dress.

As for Poppy, she pondered the problem long. At last she made a little song, which she called:

"The woman with the crooked breast."

---

One night old Sara brought news.

Poppy's box was being packed. In two days she was going to be sent away in the post-cart. Poppy thrilled with joy, and had no foreboding until next day when she overheard Clara and Emily whispering together in the yard. It transpired that though they envied Poppy the journey to Boshof in the post-cart, they did not envy her subsequent career under the protection of their mother's sister, Aunt Clara Smit.

"Do you remember that time ma sent us there when Ina had the diphtheria? We never got anything but bread and dripping, and she was eating chops and steaks all the time."

"Yes," said Clara, "and remember how she used to beat Katzi, the little Hottentot girl, in bed every night for a week until the blood came, just because she broke a cup."

"Ha! ha!" they chirruped, "won't Miss Poppy get it just!"

"Yes, and mammer's going to give her something before she goes, too. She sent me to buy a sjambok this morning, because pa's hidden his away, and when he's gone out to the 'Phoenix' to-night, she's going to have Poppy across the bed in front of her. You're to hold her head and me her feet."

"Tlk! Won't she get it!"

This interesting piece of news determined Poppy on a matter which had long been simmering in her mind. She decided at last that she would take no more beatings from Aunt Lena, and neither would she sample the quality of Aunt Clara Smit's charity. She would run away.

All that afternoon she lay turning the matter over, and later she took old Sara into her confidence for two reasons: old Sara must commandeer some food for her, and must also get for her the only thing she wanted to take away with her—a round green stone brooch which had belonged to her mother, and which Aunt Lena kept in her top drawer.

Poppy felt sure that with her mother's brooch on her she need fear nothing in the world; it was green, and therefore kindly disposed, as all green things were, being akin to trees.

It took a long while to beguile old Sara to obtain the brooch, for the old woman was very honest and she thought this looked too much like a stealing matter. Eventually she was persuaded, and a little after seven o'clock she brought it stealthily to the forage-house, together with a pocketful of food-scraps saved from her own portion of the evening meal.

After this, Poppy did not dare wait another instant. She knew that as soon as he had finished his supper, her uncle would light his pipe and stroll off to spend a cheerful evening in the billiard-room of the "Phoenix Hotel"; then they would come to fetch her indoors!

With a hasty farewell to old Sara, her only friend, she slipped out through the dark yard and ran swiftly up the street. Her direction was towards the Uitspan, a big bare place about half a mile from the town where wagons halted for a night before starting on a journey, or before bringing their loads into town in the morning. There was a big Uitspan out beyond St. Michael's, and she made for that one, remembering there were always plenty of wagons there.

When she stole near it in the darkness, she counted eight wagons, four of which were loaded to depart, since their dissel-booms were turned away from the town.

There were several fires burning, and the fume of coffee was on the night air. Someone was making as-kookies (ash-cakes) too, for a pleasant smell of burnt dough assailed Poppy's nose. Four Kaffir boys were sitting round a three-legged pot, dipping into it and jabbering together, and by the light of another fire a white woman and three children were taking their evening meal. The wagon behind them was loaded with furniture and boxes, and by this Poppy was sure that they were a family on the move. She crept nearer to them, keeping in the shadow of the close-growing bushes. The dull red fires and the stars gave the only light there was.

"Ma," said one of the children at the fire, "I see a spook over there by the bushes." The mother's response was: "Here, you make haste and finish your coffee and get into the wagon. It's time you children were asleep. They're going to inspan at eleven and you'd better get a good sleep before the wagon starts creaking and jolting."

This was useful information to Poppy. Her plan was to follow the wagon when it started and keep near it until late the next day, when too far from Bloemfontein to be sent back.

She crouched lower among the bushes, and presently began to munch some of her oddments of food, while still she watched the family she meant to adopt. When they had finished their meal they first washed up their tin beakers and plates with water from a small fykie which hung under the wagon; then everything was carefully put away into a wooden locker, and they prepared to retire for the night. The mother was a round-faced, good-natured-looking, half-Dutch colonial, evidently. She climbed sturdily into the tented wagon by the help of the brake and a little reimpe ladder. Across the tent was swung a cartel (thong mattress) and atop of this was a big comfortable mattress with pillows and blankets arranged ready for use. By the light of the lantern which the woman fixed to the roof of the tent, Poppy could see that the sides of the tent were lined with calico bags with buttoned-over flaps, all bulging with the things that would be needed on the journey. The woman proceeded to store away more things from a heap in the middle of the bed, some she put under the pillows, some under the mattress, and many were tied to the wooden ribs of the tent so that it presently resembled a Christmas-tree. Meantime the children clustered on the brake and the reimpe ladder, fidgeting to climb into the snug-looking nest. The mother talked while she worked:

"Here, Alice! I'll put this pair of old boots into the end bag, they'll do for wearing in the veldt——"

"Oh, sis, ma! I hate those old boots, they hurt me—" expostulated Alice.

"Nonsense, how can they hurt you? You keep your new ones for Pretoria, anything'll do on the veldt. Now you all see where I'm putting the comb—and this beaker we'll keep up in your corner, Minnie, so we don't have to go to the locker every time we're thirsty. I hope that boy will hang the fykie where we can reach it. Begin to take your boots off, Johnny. I'm not going to have you in here treading on my quilt with those boots; no one is to get in until they're carl-foot."

"I'll get deviljies (thorns) in my feet if I take them off out here," says Johnny. "Can't I sit on the edge of the bed?"

"All right then, but keep your feet out. Minnie, take off that good ribbon and tie your hair with this piece of tape," etc.

Eventually they were all in the tent, lying in a row crossways, the mother by the opening as a sort of barricade. They did not undress—only loosened their clothes.

Everyone wanted to lie across the opening. They couldn't see anything at the back of the tent, they complained; only had to lie and stare at the things bobbing overhead.