n into the reflected eyes that looked back
out of the pool.

Such a dirty little, large-eyed, wistful face, crowned by a curling tousle
of matted, reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid little
figure, with thin drab shoulders sticking out of a ragged calico frock.
She was quite startled. She had never seen herself in any glass before,
though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the wall of the
bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there were
swing toilet-glasses in the tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirred
in her, whispering in the grimy little ear, "_It is good to be clean_,"
and with the awakening of the maidenly instinct the womanly purpose
framed.

She put off her horrible rags, and washed herself from head to foot in the
warm clear water. She took fine sand, and scrubbed her head. She dipped
and wrung and rinsed her foul tatters of garments, standing naked in the
shallows, the hot sunshine drying her red-gold curls, and warming her
slight girlish body through and through as she spread her washed rags to
dry on the big hot stones.

There was a man's step on the bank above her, there was a rustling sound
among the green bushes. She had never heard of modesty, but she cowered
down among the boulders, and the heavy footstep passed by. She hid among
the fern while her clothes were drying, put them on tidily, and went back
with her filled water-bucket to the hotel. How could she know what injury
the kind peremptory voice, bidding her be foul no longer, had done her!
But thenceforwards a new cruelty, a fresh peril, attended her steps.

Bough and the white woman of the inn had quarrels often. She was no wife
of his. He had not brought her from Cape Colony. When the hotel was built
he had gone up to Johannesburg on business and on pleasure, and brought
her back with him from an establishment he knew. He was generally not
brutal to her except when she was ailing, when he gave her medicine that
made her worse, much worse--so very ill that she would lie groaning upon a
foul neglected bed for weeks, while Bough caroused with the coloured women
and the customers in the bar. Then, still groaning, she would drag herself
up and be about her work again. She did not want to go back to the house
at Johannesburg. She loved the man Bough in her fashion, poor bought
wretch.

She had quarrelled with him many times for many things, and been silenced
with blows, or curses, or even ca