e chance to say, 'Teach the
_amba_ with stick and the _esve_ with sugar.'"

"I do say it. She is never snubbed or silenced; and if she has had
worse than what he calls 'advice' to-day, I believe it is the first
time. She has never 'had cause to wear the veil before the household'
[to hide blushes or tears], or found that his 'lips can give sharper
sting than their kiss can heal,' like the rest of us."

"What for? If he wished to find her in fault he would have to watch
her dreams. Do you expect him to be harder to her than to us? He don't
'look for stains with a microscope.' None of us can say that he
'drinks tears for taste.' None of us ever 'smarted because the sun
scorched _him_.' Would you have him 'tie her hands for being white'?"
[punish her for perfection].

"She is never at fault because he never believes us against her,"
returned Leenoo.

"How often would he have been right? I saw nothing of to-day's
quarrel, but I know beforehand where the truth lay. I tell you this:
he hates the sandal more than the sin, but, strange as it seems, he
hates a falsehood worse still; and a falsehood against Eveena--If you
want to feel 'how the spear-grass cuts when the sheath bursts,' let
him find you out in an experiment like this! You congratulate
yourself, Leenoo, that you have got her into trouble. _Elnerve_ that
you are!--if you have, you had better have poisoned his cup before his
eyes. For every tear he sees her shed he will reckon with us at twelve
years' usury."

"_You_ have made her shed some," retorted Enva.

"Yes," said Eunane, "and if he knew it, I should like half a year's
penance in the black sash" [as the black sheep or scapegoat of her
Nursery] "better than my next half-hour alone with him. When I was
silly enough to tie the veil over her mouth" [take the lead in sending
her to Coventry] "the day after we came here, I expected to pay for
it, and thought the fruit worth the scratches. But when he came in
that evening, nodded and spoke kindly to us, but with his eyes seeking
for her; when he saw her at last sitting yonder with her head down, I
saw how his face darkened at the very idea that she was vexed, and I
thought the flash was in the cloud. When she sprang up as he called
her, and forced a smile before he looked into her face, I wished I had
been as ugly as Minn oo, that I might have belonged to the miseries,
worst-tempered man living, rather than have so provoked the giant."

"But what did he do?"