She was very, very old—nearly a hundred years old, Phil maintained—and as she advanced to greet me, I thought at first that never had I seen a wilder woman. Her face was one network of wrinkles; her hair, a remarkable reddish-brown in hue, was tied upon the top of her head in a fuzzy knot; her dress was an indescribable muddle of shawls, and perhaps her face might have been washed when she was fifty. Rich, yet scarce distinguishable at first, was the tattoo below her mouth; above it, at one corner, a cigarette stuck out. She made me heartily welcome, however, with outstretched hands full of baked karaka kernels, and a flood of talk and gestures. The talk, unhappily, I could not understand at all, and felt decidedly shy at first of the kernels; but the friendliness was irresistible: we squatted down side by side and entered into a brisk exchange of smiles.
Mr. Anstruther meanwhile, Phil, and even Tom the diffident, kept shouting out to her something in Maori to which she made always the same reply, accompanied by many shakes of her dishevelled head and a certain air of dignified protectiveness that aroused my curiosity. When at last we had parted, with much cordiality and warm handshakes, and I had got back to the boat, I asked the men what they had been saying.
“Only wanted her to rub noses with you,” said they.
“Thank you,” said I, not, I fear, without a wriggle. “And what did she say?”
“Said she wouldn’t, ’cause she didn’t believe you would like it.”
How glad I was that I had mastered my hesita-
