"How can I know one who is tied up like a gourd in a mat? Yet is it

not--is it not--"

"Yes, it is Mameena, and I am very pleased that you should remember my

voice, Macumazahn, after we have been separated for such a long, long

time," and, with a sudden movement, she threw back the kaross, hood and

all, revealing herself in all her strange beauty.

I jumped down off the wagon-box and took her hand.

"O Macumazana," she said, while I still held it--or, to be accurate,

while she still held mine--"indeed my heart is glad to see a friend

again," and she looked at me with her appealing eyes, which, in the red

light, I could see appeared to float in tears.

"A friend, Mameena!" I exclaimed. "Why, now you are so rich, and the

wife of a big chief, you must have plenty of friends."

"Alas! Macumazahn, I am rich in nothing except trouble, for my husband

saves, like the ants for winter. Why, he even grudged me this poor

kaross; and as for friends, he is so jealous that he will not allow me

any."

"He cannot be jealous of women, Mameena!"

"Oh, women! Piff! I do not care for women; they are very unkind to me,

because--because--well, perhaps you can guess why, Macumazahn,"

she answered, glancing at her own reflection in a little travelling

looking-glass that hung from the woodwork of the wagon, for I had been

using it to brush my hair, and smiled very sweetly.

"At least you have your husband, Mameena, and I thought that perhaps by

this time--"

She held up her hand.

"My husband! Oh, I would that I had him not, for I hate him, Macumazahn;

and as for the rest--never! The truth is that I never cared for any man

except one whose name you may chance to remember, Macumazahn."

"I suppose you mean Saduko--" I began.

"Tell me, Macumazahn," she inquired innocently, "are white people very

stupid? I ask because you do not seem as clever as you used to be. Or

have you perhaps a bad memory?"

Now I felt myself turning red as the sky behind me, and broke in

hurriedly: "If you did not like your husband, Mameena, you should not have married

him. You know you need not unless you wished."

"When one has only two thorn bushes to sit on, Macumazahn, one chooses

that which seems to have the fewest prickles, to discover sometimes that

they are still there in hundreds, although one did not see them. You

know that at length everyone gets tired of standing."

"Is that why you have taken to walking, Mameena? I mean, what are you

doing here alone?"

"I? Oh, I heard that you were passing this way, and came to have a talk

with you. No, from you I cannot hide even the least bit of the truth. I

came to talk with you, but also I came to see Zikali and ask him what a

wife should do who hates her husband."




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