The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield Read Free Book Online Page B

liked the bull frightfully and so she had walked away back through the orchard up the grassy slope along the path by the lace bark tree and so into the spread tangled garden. She did not believe that she would ever not get lost in this garden. Twice she had found her way to the big iron gates they had driven through last night and she had begun to walk up the drive that led to the house, but there were so many little paths on either side — on one side they all led into a tangle of tall dark trees and strange bushes with flat velvety leaves and feathery cream flowers that buzzed with flies when you shook them – this was a frightening side and no garden at all. The little paths were wet and clayey with tree roots spanned across them, “like big fowls feet” thought Kezia. But on the other side of the drive there was a high box border and the paths had box edgings and all of them led into a deeper and deeper tangle of flowers. It was summer. The camellia trees were in flower, white and crimson and pink and white striped with flashing leaves – you could not see a leaf on the syringa bushes for the white clusters. All kinds of roses – gentlemen’s button hole roses, little white ones but far too full of insects to put under anybody’s nose, pink monthly roses with a ring of fallen petals round the bushes, cabbage roses on thick fat stalks, moss roses, always in bud, pink smooth beauties opening curl on curl, red ones so dark that they seemed to turn black as they fell and a certain exquisite cream kind with a slender red stem and bright red leaves. Kezia knew the name of that kind: it was her grandmother’s favourite. There were clumps of fairy bells and cherry pie and all kinds of geraniums and there were little trees of verbena and bluish lavender bushes and a bed of pelagoniums with velvet eyes and leaves like moth’s wings. There was a bed of nothing but mignonette and another of nothing but pansies – borders of double and single daisies, all kinds of little tufty plants.
    The red hot pokers were taller than she; the Japanese sunflowers grew in a tiny jungle. She sat down on one of the box borders. By pressing hard at first it made a very pleasant springy seat but how dusty it was inside – She bent down to look and sneezed and rubbed her nose. And then she found herself again at the top of the rolling grassy slope that led down to the orchard and beyond the orchard to an avenue of pine trees with wooden seats between bordering one side of the tennis court. . . She looked at the slope a moment; then she lay down on her back gave a tiny squeak and rolled over and over into the thick flowery orchard grass. As she lay still waiting for things to stop spinning round she decided to go up to the house and ask the servant girl for an empty match-box. She wanted to make a surprise for the grandmother. First she would put a leaf inside with a big violet lying on it – then she would put a very small little white picotee perhaps, on each side of the violet and then she would sprinkle some lavender on the top, but not to cover their heads. She often made these surprises for the grandmother and they were always most successful: “Do you want a match, my Granny?” “Why, yes, child. I believe a match is the very thing I am looking for –” The Grandmother slowly opened the box and came upon the picture inside. “Good gracious child! how you astonished me!” “Did I – did I really astonish you?” Kezia threw up her arms with joy. “I can make her one every day here” she thought, scrambling up the grass slope on her slippery shoes. But on her way to the house she came to the island that lay in the middle of the drive, dividing the drive into two arms that met in front of the house. The island was made of grass banked up high. Nothing grew on the green top at all except one round plant with thick grey-green thorny leaves and out of the middle there sprang up a tall stout stem. Some of the leaves of this plant