do without her. It was a settled thing that they
should take her back to the city with them, and have a faithful and
grateful retainer all their lives and a sort of Aunt Chloe for their
children, when they had any. The teacher got yards of copy out of her
for his "Maori Sketches and Characters", worked joyously at his romance,
and felt great already, and was happy. She had a bed made up temporarily
(until the teacher could get a spring mattress for her from town) on the
floor in the dining-room, and when she'd made her bed she'd squat on it
in front of the fire and sing Maori songs in a soft voice. She'd sing
the teacher and his wife, in the next room, to sleep. Then she'd get up
and have a feed, but they never heard her.

Her manners at the table (for she was treated "like one of themselves"
in the broadest sense of the term) were surprisingly good, considering
that the adults of her people were decidedly cow-like in white society,
and scoffed sea-eggs, shell-fish, and mutton-birds at home with a gallop
which was not edifying. Her appetite, it was true, was painful at times
to the poetic side of the teacher's nature; but he supposed that she'd
been half-starved at home, poor girl, and would get over it. Anyway, the
copy he'd get out of her would repay him for this and other expenses a
hundredfold. Moreover, begging and borrowing had ceased with her advent,
and the teacher set this down to her influence.

The first jar came when she was sent on horseback to the town for
groceries, and didn't get back till late the next day. She explained
that some of her relations got hold of her and made her stay, and wanted
her to go into public-houses with them, but she wouldn't. She said that
SHE wanted to come home. But why didn't she? The teacher let it pass,
and hoped she'd gain strength of character by-and-bye. He had waited up
late the night before with her supper on the hob; and he and his wife
had been anxious for fear something had happened to the poor girl
who was under their care. He had walked to the treacherous river-ford
several times during the evening, and waited there for her. So perhaps
he was tired, and that was why he didn't write next night.

The sugar-bag, the onion-basket, the potato-bag and the tea-chest began
to "go down" alarmingly, and an occasional pound of candles, a pigeon,
a mutton-bird (plucked and ready for Sunday's cooking), and other little
trifles went, also. August couldn't understand it, and th