stillness but the
breathing of the sleepers and the soft perpetual dropping of acorns
from the branches overhead.

The peace and beauty of it smote April to the heart. She pressed her
fingers over her eyes and tears oozed through them, trickling down her
face. When at last she looked again the stars were gone and the sky
was blue as a thrush's egg, with a fluff of rose-red clouds knitted
together overhead and a few crimson rags scudding across the Qua-Quas.
A dove suddenly cried, "Choo-coo, choo-coo," and others took up the
refrain, until in the hills and woods hundreds of doves were greeting
the morning with their soft, thrilling cries. Fowls straying from a
barn near by started scratching in the sand. The first streak of
sunshine shot across the hills and struck a bush of pomegranates
blossoming scarlet by the gate.

Presently the farm workers began to come from their huts and file past
the stoep towards the outhouses. Julie, the Cape foreman, with a right
leg longer than the left, was the first to stagger by.

"Moorer, Missis!" he said, with a pull of his cap and a swift
respectful glance at the stoep. Clive, awake by now on her oak chest,
responded absently without raising her head from the pillow.

"Moorer, Julie!"

Next, Isaac, whose legs were so formed that when he stood still they
described a circle, and when he moved the circle became a triangle.

"Moorer, Missis!" said he.

"Moorer, Isaac!"

Jim, the cowherd, had a hare-lip and no roof to his mouth, and was so
modest that he turned his head away when he lisped his salutation to
the stoep.

"Moor-ler, Mithis!"

"Moorer, Jim!"

After a few moment's silence a voice from one of the beds was heard.

"Is the file-past of the Decrepits over? May one now sleep for a
while?"

"This place ought to be called _des Invalides_," grumbled another.

Clive laughed her large, blithe laugh.

"At any rate, there's nothing wrong with me," she proclaimed, and
sprang with one leap into her top-boots. Passing April's bed she
touched the girl's eyelids tenderly, and her finger-tips came away wet.

"Nor with our little April, I hope--except a passing shower! You had
better come up the lands with me this morning, and plant trees."

That was Clive's cure for all ills of the body and soul: to plant trees
that would grow up and benefit Africa long after the planters were dead
and forgotten. No one ever left Ho-la-le-la without having had a dose
of this med