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The birds were tuning for their evening song. A breeze sprang up and coquetted with the strays of her wavy dark hair. And they sat cross-legged on the grass on opposite sides of the tablecloth and joked and laughed and ate, and ate and laughed and joked until the stars began to appear in the vast paling opal of the sky.
'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that "bit of shelter," he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the bottomless pit.
When it was half gone, he suddenly swore and flung it overboard. "Larpent," he said, breaking a silence, "if you were a damned rotter like me what should you do with yourself?" Larpent turned his head and quietly surveyed him. "I shouldn't run a home for waifs and strays," he said deliberately. Saltash made a sharp movement.
Sometimes a letter, a newspaper, or some public event, would bring back the memory of the gay, handsome lad that had once made so bright the little back parlor. Such strays from Donald's present life were always pleasant ones. In ten years he had made great strides forward. Every one had a good word for him.
If it strays into the adjacent living-room, done in quite another scheme, it will absolutely thwart your efforts at harmony, while your porch-room done in wicker and gay chintzes, striped awnings and geranium rail-boxes, cries out against the intrusion of a chair dragged out from the house.
"We shan't forget the 'Waifs and Strays' afternoon in a hurry," said Lilias, as she tidied her possessions afterwards, for it was her drawer that the burglar had turned upside down in his search for valuables. "I feel I want to sleep with a revolver under my pillow!" "If you did, I'd be far more afraid of you than of the burglar!" protested Bertha. "I know you'd let it off at the wrong person.
There's nothin' there but sand an' cactus an' all that; a goat couldn't hardly keep body an' soul together. Except once lookin' for strays that got through the fence, I never set foot in it myself." Down in the shallow gully where they sat, the shadows were gathering, showing that dusk was rapidly approaching.
Thus each company left greetings and words of cheer to those who were following. Lost cattle were also advertised by that means, and many strays or convalescents were found and driven forward to their owners. Early June afforded rarest sport to lovers of the chase, and our company was kept bountifully supplied with choicest cuts of antelope, deer, and elk meat, also juicy buffalo steak.
I was off, trailing those five steers, for three days and two nights. By sunset of the third day I had them back at the villa. After that I was called on to hunt down and round up all stampeded cattle and all strays, whether cattle, horses, goats, sheep or swine. I enjoyed my lone outings and between them basked contentedly in the comfort of my cottage and the amenity of Septima's cheeriness.
That field, in the eyes of any middle-aged observer, was in strange disarray. The old Liberal party had been almost swept away; only a few waifs and strays remained, the exponents of a programme that nobody wanted, and of cries that stirred nobody's blood.
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