Her grey eyes filled with tears so that she could no longer see that
everlasting ocean, which she did not regret as it wearied her. She wiped
them with the back of her hand that was burnt quite brown by the sun, and
turning impatiently, fell to watching two of those strange insects known
as the Praying Mantis, or often in South Africa as Hottentot gods, which
after a series of genuflections, were now fighting desperately among the
dead stalks of grass at her feet. Men could not be more savage, she
reflected, for really their ferocity was hideous. Then a great tear fell
upon the head of one of them, and astonished by this phenomenon, or
thinking perhaps that it had begun to rain, it ran away and hid itself,
while its adversary sat up and looked about it triumphantly, taking to
itself all the credit of conquest.

She heard a step behind her, and having again furtively wiped her eyes
with her hand, the only handkerchief available, looked round to see her
father stalking towards her.

"Why are you crying, Rachel?" he asked in an irritable voice. "It is wrong
to cry because your little brother has been taken to glory."

"Jesus cried over Lazarus, and He wasn't even His brother," she answered
in a reflective voice, then by way of defending herself added
inconsequently: "I was watching two Hottentot gods fight."

As Mr. Dove could think of no reply to her very final Scriptural example,
he attacked her on the latter point.

"A cruel amusement," he said, "especially as I have heard that boys, yes,
and men, too, pit these poor insects against each other, and make bets