THE WAVES 
watch them. 1 hate watching other people play games. 1 
will make images of all the things I hate most and bury 
them in the ground. This shiny pebble is Madame Carlo, 
and I will bury her deep because of her fawning and in- 
gratiating manners, because of the sixpence she gave me for 
keeping my knuckles flat when I played my scales. I 
buried her sixpence. I would bury the whole school: the 
gymnasium ; the classroom; the dining-room that always 
smells of meat; and the chapel. I would bury the red- 
brown tiles and the oily portraits of old men—benefactors, 
founders of schools. There are some trees 1 like; the 
cherry tree with lumps of clear gum on the bark; and one 
view from the attic towards some far hills. Save for these, 
I would bury it all as I bury these ugly stones that are always 
scattered about this briny coast, with its piers and its trippers. 
At home, the waves are mile long. On winter nights we 
hear them booming. Last Christmas a man was drowned 
sitting alone in his cart.” 
“ When Miss Lambert passes,” said Rhoda, “talking to 
the clergyman, the others laugh and imitate her hunch 
behind her back; yet everything changes and becomes 
luminous. Jinny leaps higher too when Miss Lambert 
passes. Suppose she saw that daisy, it would change. 
Wherever she goes, things are changed under her eyes; 
and yet when she has gone is not the thing the same again ? 
Miss Lambert is taking the clergyman through the wicket- 
gate to her private garden ; and when she comes to the pond, 
she sees a frog on a leaf, and that will change. All is solemn, 
all is pale where she stands, like a statue in a grove. She 
lets her tasselled silken cloak slip down, and only her purple 
ring still glows, her vinous, her amethystine ring. There is 
this mystery about people when they leave us. When they 
leave us I can companion them to the pond and make them 
stately. When Miss Lambert passes, she makes the daisy 
change; and everything runs like streaks of fire when she 
carves the beef. Month by month things ate losing their 
hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my 
? 2