l was expected at any moment. Then they sat down on ridiculously
comfortable chairs, and Kitty sought to entertain her strange visitor,
and Jees Uck strove to help her.

"You knew my husband in the North?" Kitty asked, once.

"Sure. I wash um clothes," Jees Uck had answered, her English abruptly
beginning to grow atrocious.

"And this is your boy? I have a little girl."

Kitty caused her daughter to be brought, and while the children, after
their manner, struck an acquaintance, the mothers indulged in the talk of
mothers and drank tea from cups so fragile that Jees Uck feared lest hers
should crumble to pieces beneath her fingers. Never had she seen such
cups, so delicate and dainty. In her mind she compared them with the
woman who poured the tea, and there uprose in contrast the gourds and
pannikins of the Toyaat village and the clumsy mugs of Twenty Mile, to
which she likened herself. And in such fashion and such terms the
problem presented itself. She was beaten. There was a woman other than
herself better fitted to bear and upbring Neil Bonner's children. Just
as his people exceeded her people, so did his womankind exceed her. They
were the man compellers, as their men were the world compellers. She
looked at the rose-white tenderness of Kitty Bonner's skin and remembered
the sun-beat on her own face. Likewise she looked from brown hand to
white--the one, work-worn and hardened by whip-handle and paddle, the
other as guiltless of toil and soft as a newborn babe's. And, for all
the obvious softness and apparent weakness, Jees Uck looked into the blue
eyes and saw the mastery she had seen in Neil Bonner's eyes and in the
eyes of Neil Bonner's people.

"Why, it's Jees Uck!" Neil Bonner said, when he entered. He said it
calmly, with even a ring of joyful cordiality, coming over to her and
shaking both her hands, but looking into her eyes with a worry in his own
that she understood.

"Hello, Neil!" she said. "You look much good."

"Fine, fine, Jees Uck," he answered heartily, though secretly studying
Kitty for some sign of what had passed between the two. Yet he knew his
wife too well to expect, even though the worst had passed, such a sign.

"Well, I can't say how glad I am to see you," he went on. "What's
happened? Did you strike a mine? And when did you get in?"

"Oo-a, I get in to-day," she replied, her voice instinctively seeking its
guttural parts. "I no strike it, Neil. You known Cap'