e for him to turn towards his
veld-home. He had held Christmas services in various places.

He was now looking forward to a rest and to supper-time. He was
sitting outside a wayside school as he read that letter. Some
Mashona children had brought him clay figures as Christmas
presents. They graced the grey rock beside him one big figure and
a little figure or two in clay skirts, also a quaint version of a
perambulator. They showed up rather drably against the glory of
Western sun and blue sky.

The letter announced Perpetua's plighted troth. It was from the
curate. He added that they were both looking forward to settling
down shortly in the family living. They might be married in April
or in June. Hood smiled and lit his pipe resignedly.

'So his airy notions of Africa are mixed with earth,' he thought,
'honest Berkshire earth, hurst sand, or down chalk, I suppose.
No, I'm forgetting. That rectory's across the river in Bucks or
Oxon, I forget which. Anyhow the earth's got the better of the
air, and it's arranged that Africa's not to see him.' His eyes
fell upon the clay family grouped beside him. 'It's good
Perpetua's having a home and a family in prospect,' he thought.
'One understands that there's a good deal to be said for such
things when Christmas comes round, at any rate.'

Some words came into his head, words of his favorite poet weren't
they? 'I hope I shall never marry; the roaring wind is my wife,
and the stars through the window-panes are my children: the
mighty abstract idea of beauty I have in all things stifles the
more divided and minute domestic happiness.' He looked at those
clay grotesques rather tenderly. He was thinking of a story in a
life of St. Francis he had read only yesterday, how he had made
him figures of snow and called them in irony his wife and
children and servants. 'Here is thy wife, these are thy sons and
daughters, the other two are thy servant and thy handmaid; and
for all these thou art bound to provide. But if the care of so
many trouble thee, be thou careful to serve one Lord alone.'

He said over to himself those unforgotten words, sadly rather
than scornfully this time:

'In a wife's lap, as in a grave,
Man's airy notions mix with earth.'

He shouldered his knapsack. Then he commended the clay figures to
their donors; he asked them if they would mind looking after
them. He was very grateful; he would have them kept in the school
to remind him of things that earthy litt