"Yak—Varns!"
Half dead with weariness—stiff, wretched, hungry—she crept from her hiding-place and stumbled on her way, wrapped once more in the impenetrable dust.
On the night of the second day she discovered herself to the family in the tented wagon. Staggering from the bush at the side of the road she climbed on to the brake of the slowly moving wagon and appeared before the comfortable contented occupants—a filthy, tattered, unkempt vision; her face peaked and wan under the dirt, her eyes glazy. "Give me food and water," she whispered—her voice had never returned since Ina's death.
After one long stare, and amidst screams from the children, the woman pulled her up into the tent, bade the children make room, and quickly found water and biscuits.
Poppy ate and drank ravening, then lay back and cried weakly, the big hot tears washing white streaks down her cheeks. The woman with an eye to her clean bedclothes, proceeded to sponge her face with water in a tin beaker, and told Alice to take off the tattered boots and stockings. She questioned Poppy the while, but Poppy cared for nothing but sleep. She lay back and slept even as they washed her. About noon she awoke and found herself still lying on the big bed, and the woman was standing on the brake with coffee and a plate of stew.
"Wake up and eat this, girl; and now you are better tell me where you come from and where you're going, hey?"
Poppy, between eating and drinking, recited her tale: she was travelling with her father and brothers and sisters to the Transvaal; had wandered away from the wagons and got lost on the veldt—believed she had been wandering for a week; her name she fancifully gave as Lucy Gray (it seemed to wake no echoes in the minds or memories of her listeners); no doubt, she said, these wagons would catch the others up in a few days. She begged the woman to take care of her in the meantime. She would help with the cooking and the children—she wouldn't eat much.
The woman regarded her suspiciously once or twice, but she was stupid as well as good-natured and had not the wit to find flaws in the well-thought-out tale. She consented to fall in with Poppy's request—in common humanity she could do little else—found some clean clothes for her and a pair of old boots, and gave her fat to smear on her wounds and sore feet.
But first Poppy had to be passed before the Baas of the wagons—the big fierce-looking Boer who fortunately was not at all fierce, only very stupid, and although he refused to believe her tale, turning to Mrs. Brant and remarking briefly: "Sij lê!" (she lies!) he could not offer any suggestion as to what the truth might be; nor did he make any objection to Mrs. Brant's plans; so Poppy was outcast no more. She became one of a family, and speedily made herself so useful to Mrs. Brant that the good woman was glad to have her.
Followed many long happy weeks. Happy even when the wet-season swooped down on them and they had to wait on the banks of swollen rivers fireless for days; or remain stuck in a mudhole for hours, until their wheels could be dug out or pulled out by three spans of oxen combined, while mosquitoes bit and swarmed over them, leaving a festering sore for every bite they gave; even under the heavy sweltering sail that was flung over them at nights to keep rain out, and which also kept the air out and made the small tent like a pest-house; even when the food gave out and they had to rely on what they could get at the scattered farms.