in the trough—she only shakes her head, laughs sillily, and mutters some foolish remark about keeping the other for somebody else she might meet. Ah, well, never mind; Pipi has at least the one, and she would like to smoke it at once and make sure of it, but “No right!” she says plaintively—she means “no light”; she has no matches, and no more, it appears, has the pakeha. Boiled-headed slave! How, without matches, can she expect anybody to smoke her cigarettes?
“Perhaps this man has some,” suggests the pakeha, pointing to the solitary driver of a wagon coming down the hill behind them. She explains the predicament, and the man, with a good-natured smile, pours out half a boxful into Pipi’s upstretched palms, and drives on. Ah, and perhaps he had topeka with him, too, real, good, dark, strong topeka in a stick; and, had Pipi only been wise enough to wait for him, and let this miserable person go by, she might by now, perhaps, have been having a real smoke. As for this hikarete, by the smell of it, Hana, aged thirteen months, could smoke it with impunity. No coat, no kai, no hikapeni, one hikarete of hay—Huh! the unprofitableness of this pakeha!
“You go on!” says Pipi, with an authoritative gesture. They have got as far as the bridge, and she squats down by her swamp. All that long hill to toil up again, too!
But behold, the black-hearted one at her side says, actually, “Oh, I’m in no particular hurry. I think I’ll sit down a bit, too,” and does so. Now, who that has found the riwai (potato) rotten wants to look at the rind?
