staggering bush. The impassivity of the natives departed
from them when they stood about the funeral pyres, and clapping of
hands and warlike chanting went heavenward with the smoke. Christine
and Roddy often lingered to watch these rejoicings; indeed, it was
impossible at any time to get the boy past Saltire and his gang without
a halt. The English girl, while standing somewhat aloof, would
nevertheless not conceal from herself the interest she felt in the
forestry man's remarks, not only on the common enemy, but his work in
general.

"They have a great will to live, Roddy--much stronger than you and I,
because we dissipate our will in so many directions. I've met this
determination before in growing things, though. There are plants in
the African jungle that you have to track and trail like wild beasts
and do murder upon before they will die. And this old prickly-pear is
of the same family. If a bit of leaf can break off and fly past you,
it hides itself behind a stone, hastily puts roots into the ground, and
grows into a bush before you can say 'Jack Robinson.' Your farm will
be a splendid place when we've got rid of all these and replaced them
with the spineless plant. Prickly-pear without spines is a perfect
food for cattle and ostriches in this climate."

Thus he talked to Roddy, as if the latter were already a man and in
possession of his heritage--the wide lands of Blue Aloes; but always
while he talked, he looked at and considered the girl who stood aloof,
wearing her air of world-weariness like a veil over the youth and bloom
of her.

And she, on her side, was considering and reading him, too. She liked
him better, because, since that first night of Mr. van Cannan's
departure, he had absented himself from the dinner-table. That showed
some glimmer of grace in him. Still, there was far too much arrogance
in his manner, she thought, and decided that he had probably been
spoiled by too facile women. Nothing blunts the fine spiritual side of
a man's character so rapidly as association with women of low ideals.
The romance of her own life had been split upon that rock. She had
known what it was to stand by and see the man she loved with all the
pure idealism of youth wrecked by the cheap wiles of a high-born woman
with a second-rate soul. Perhaps her misfortune had sharpened her
vision for this defect in men. Certainly, it had tainted her outlook
with disdain. She sometimes felt, as Pater wrote