The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield

were so old that they curved up in the air no longer, they turned back – they were split and broken – some of them lay flat and withered on the ground – but the fresh leaves curved up in to the air with their spiked edges; some of them looked as though they had been painted with broad bands of yellow. Whatever could it be? She had never seen anything like it before – She stood and stared. And then she saw her Mother coming down the path with a red carnation in her hand – “Mother what is it?” asked Kezia. Linda looked up at the fat swelling plant with its cruel leaves its towering fleshy stem. High above them, as though becalmed in the air, and yet holding so fast to the earth it grew from it might have had claws and not roots. The curving leaves seemed to be hiding something; the big blind stem cut into the air as if no wind could ever shake it. “That is an aloe, Kezia,” said Linda. “Does it ever have any flowers.” “Yes my child” said her Mother and she smiled down at Kezia, half shutting her eyes, “once every hundred years.”

Chapter Three
    O n his way home from the office Stanley Burnell stopped the buggy at the “Bodega”, got out and bought a large bottle of oysters. At the chinaman’s shop next door he bought a pineapple in the pink of condition and noticing a basket of fresh black cherries he told John to put him up a pound of those as well. The oysters and pineapple he stowed away in the box under the front seat – but the cherries he kept in his hand. Pat, the handy man, leapt off the box and tucked him up again in a brown rug. “Lift yer feet, Mr Burnell while I give her a fold under,” said he. “Right, right – first rate!” said Stanley – “you can make straight for home now.” “I believe this man is a first rate chap” thought he as Pat gave the grey mare a touch and the buggy sprang forward. He liked the look of him sitting up there in his neat dark brown coat and brown bowler – he liked the way Pat had tucked him in and he liked his eyes – There was nothing servile about him, – and if there was one thing he hated more than another in a servant it was servility – and he looked as though he were pleased with his job – happy and contented. The grey mare went very well. Burnell was impatient to be out of the town. He wanted to be home. Ah, it was splendid to live in the country – to get right out of this hole of a town once the office was closed and this long drive in the fresh warm air knowing all the time that his own house was at the other end with its garden and paddocks, its three tip top cows and enough fowls and ducks to keep them in eggs and poultry was splendid, too. As they left the town finally and bowled away up the quiet road his heart beat hard for joy – He rooted in the bag and began to eat the cherries, three or four at a time chucking the stones over the side of the buggy. They were delicious, so plump and cold without a spot or a bruise on them. Look at these two now – black one side and white the other – perfect – a perfect little pair of Siamese twins – and he stuck them in his button hole – By Jove, he wouldn’t mind giving that chap up there a handful, but no, better not! Better wait until he had been with him a bit longer. He began to plan what he would do with his Saturday afternoons and Sundays. He wouldn’t go to the Club for lunch on Saturday. No, cut away from the office as soon as possible and get them to give him a couple of slices of cold meat and half a lettuce when he got home. And then he’d get a few chaps out from town to play tennis in the afternoons. Not too many – three at most. Beryl was a good player too. He stretched out his right arm and slowly bent it, feeling the muscles. A bath, a good rub down, a cigar on the verandah after dinner. On Sunday morning they would go to church – children and all – which reminded him that he must hire a pew in the sun if possible – and well forward so as to be