When not cooking, eating, or keeping their charges from straying, they will find plenty of diversion to help them through the day. They build little houses in trees, putting up a platform of sticks and a grass shelter over it; they dig out mole-crickets (_lololo_), guided by the sound of their chirping, or they make models, as aforesaid, if they find a patch of moist clay, or an ant-heap and water in happy conjunction. In fact, whenever, in walking through bush or dambo, you come across any phenomenon obviously due to human agency—such, for instance, as hats made out of leaves pinned together with thorns or bits of grass—yet without visible author or apparent object, you may be sure your escort will attribute it to the _abusa_—herd-boys. When I asked the meaning of a number of tufts of grass knotted together in the middle of a piece of meadow, the children cheerfully said that the _abusa_ had done it in order to trip people up. I think, however, that they need not be credited with this, as it is more probable that some one had been marking out a plot for hoeing next rainy season; and besides, natives are not in the habit of walking off the path. [Illustration: 1. BOYS DIGGING OUT FIELD-MICE 2. CAUGHT! 3. ROASTING THE “MEAT,” SPITTED ON A STICK 4. EATING Note the flat basket of porridge, for which the roast mice are the “relish”] They divert themselves also with music, of a sort, making flutes and whistles out of hollow reeds, or joints of bamboo—it is surprising what sweet sounds they get out of a very simple bamboo flute. There was a boy, Bvalani, who used to play on his flute all the way up the hill, as he came to school. He further distinguished himself by wearing a charming little coronet, plaited out of pale green palm-leaves, into which he had stuck two or three blossoms of the crimson ‘Turk’s cap’ lily. Sometimes they fasten several lengths of reed together to make a kind of Pan-pipes. The only times they are likely to get into serious trouble are when they let the goats get into the gardens—or when (being set to watch the fields when the crops are ripening) they fail to drive off the baboons. Then, as the sun gets low, they drive their respective flocks home, put them up for the night, and join the family at the evening meal—or, if that is over, the mothers are sure to have put aside something for them. And then come the evening games, on moonlight nights—or the sitting round the fire, telling stories and asking riddles. This is the appropriate hour for such amusements. A little Yao boy told Mr. Macdonald that ‘the old people’ said that ‘if boys recited riddles at midday, horns would grow on their foreheads.’ This _might_ be intended as a precaution against their attention being absorbed by this pastime when they ought to be herding.