A plain but tidy little room was given to Christopher, and he slept there like a top.  Next morning his nurse called him up to help her water the grass.  She led the way with a tub on her head and two buckets in it.  She took him to the dam; when she got there she took out the buckets, left one on the bank, and gave the other to Christie.  She then went down the steps till the water was up to her neck, and bade Christie fill the tub.  He poured eight bucketsful in.  Then she came slowly out, straight as an arrow, balancing this tub full on her head.  Then she held out her hands for the two buckets.  Christie filled them, wondering, and gave them to her.  She took them like toy buckets, and glided slowly home with this enormous weight, and never spilled a drop.  Indeed, the walk was more smooth and noble than ever, if possible.

When she reached the house, she hailed a Hottentot, and it cost the man and Christopher a great effort of strength to lower her tub between them.

“What a vertebral column you must have!” said Christopher.

“You must not speak bad words, my child,” said she.  “Now, you water the grass and the flowers.”  She gave him a watering-pot, and watched him maternally; but did not put a hand to it.  She evidently considered this part of the business as child’s play, and not a fit exercise of her powers.

It was only by drowning that little oasis twice a day that the grass was kept green and the flowers alive.

She found him other jobs in course of the day, and indeed he was always helping somebody or other, and became quite ruddy, bronzed, and plump of cheek, and wore a strange look of happiness, except at times when he got apart, and tried to recall the distant past.  Then he would knit his brow, and looked perplexed and sad.

They were getting quite used to him, and he to them, when one day he did not come in to dinner.  Phoebe sent out for him; but they could not find him.

The sun set.  Phoebe became greatly alarmed, and even Dick was anxious.

They all turned out, with guns and dogs, and hunted for him beneath the stars.

Just before daybreak Dick Dale saw a fire sparkle by the side of a distant thicket.  He went to it, and there was Ucatella seated, calm and grand as antique statue, and Christopher lying by her side, with a shawl thrown over him.  As Dale came hurriedly up, she put her finger to her lips, and said, “My child sleeps.  Do not wake him.  When he sleeps, he hunts the past, as Collie hunts the springbok.”

“Here’s a go,” said Dick.  Then, hearing a chuckle, he looked up, and was aware of a comical appendage to the scene.  There hung, head downwards, from a branch, a Kafir boy, who was, in fact, the brother of the stately Ucatella, only went further into antiquity for his models of deportment; for, as she imitated the antique marbles, he reproduced the habits of that epoch when man roosted, and was arboreal.  Wheel somersaults, and, above all, swinging head downwards from a branch, were the sweeteners of his existence.