II.

Waldo's Stranger.
Waldo lay on his stomach on the red sand.

The small ostriches he herded wandered about him, pecking at the food he had cut, or at pebbles and dry sticks.

On his right lay the graves; to his left the dam; in his hand was a large wooden post covered with carvings, at which he worked.
Doss lay before him basking in the winter sunshine, and now and again casting an expectant glance at the corner of the nearest ostrich camp.
The scrubby thorn-trees under which they lay yielded no shade, but none was needed in that glorious June weather, when in the hottest part of the afternoon the sun was but pleasantly warm; and the boy carved on, not looking up, yet conscious of the brown serene earth about him and the intensely blue sky above.
Presently, at the corner of the camp, Em appeared, bearing a covered saucer in one hand and in the other a jug, with a cup in the top.

She was grown into a premature little old woman of sixteen, ridiculously fat.