Chapter 2.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. The jug
and saucer she put down on the ground before the dog and his master and
dropped down beside them herself, panting and out of breath.
"Waldo, as I came up the camps I met some one on horseback, and I do
believe it must be the new man that is coming."
The new man was an Englishman to whom the Boer-woman had hired half the
farm.
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