At Blue Aloes, the place of the dead was hidden far from the haunts of the living, but the narrow, uncertain path led to it at last—a bare, sun-bleached spot, secluded but unshaded by a gaudy-blossomed hedge of cactus. A straight, single line of graves, less than a dozen in number, lay blistering in the sunshine. Some were marked with slabs of lime-worn [Transcriber's note: time-worn?] stone, upon whose faded lettering little green rock-lizards were disporting themselves. The last two in the line had white marble crosses at their heads, each bearing a name in black letters, and a date. The preceding one, too, was fairly new, with the earth heaped in still unbroken lumps upon it, but it bore no distinguishing mark of any kind. Death appeared to have been fairly busy in recent times at Blue Aloes. The date on the end grave was no older than six months.
Little Bernard Quentin van Cannan lay there, sleeping too soon at the age of three and a half. Roddy pronounced his brief but sufficiently eloquent epitaph.
"He was Coral's twin. A tarantula bit him—one of the awful big poisonous ones out of the aloe hedge."
The next cross registered the resting-place of Carol Quentin van Cannan—drowned a year back, at the age of nine. Christine's sad gaze travelled to the third and unmarked mound.
"Is that Sophy's grave?" she asked softly, for shrivelling on the lumps of earth lay a bunch of poppies that she had seen Roddy gathering the day before, and now remembered wondering where he had disappeared to afterward. Roddy did not answer. He was staring before him with manful eyes that winked rapidly but shed no tears. His lips were pursed up as if to whistle, yet made no sound. At the sight of him and the withered poppies in the place where never a flower of memory blossomed, hot tears surged to the girl's eyes. It was wistful to think of a child remembering when all others forgot.
"No one ever comes here but me," he said, at last.
Christine got rid of her tears by turning her back on him and pressing them away with her fingers, for she knew that emotion embarrasses and pains children, and she wanted to help this small, brave man, not hurt him.
"You and I will come here often, Roddy. We will turn it into a garden, and make it blossom like the rose—shall we?"
"Yes, yes!" he cried eagerly. "'Blossom like the rose'—that comes out of the Bible! I have heard daddy read it. But we must not talk about it to mamma. It makes her too sad to come here, or even talk about it. Mamma doesn't like sad things."
Suddenly, the strange quietude of the place was invaded by the sound of voices. They were far-off voices, but both the girl and the child started as though caught in some forbidden act, and instinctively took hands. A moment later they were hurrying away from the lonely spot, back by the way they had come. Half-way home they came upon Richard Saltire and the squad of Kafirs who carried his implements and liquids. Theirs were the voices that had been heard. Work had begun on the territory so thickly sewn with prickly-pears that lay between farm and cemetery.