LITTLE JINNY: IN LIFE AND IN DEATH 299 



which to be vain. She had a fuzzy head of hair. Some, 

 like fur, crept down across her brows, giving her face 

 a singularly unbecoming cast. I did not notice this 

 peculiar uncomeliness until she was dying, and I felt then 

 more than ever that she was not to be judged in accordance 

 with our standard of beauty — though she had many of our 

 little weaknesses. Her ignorance of civilised ways was 

 pathetic, yet she was vain and coquettish as the fairest of 

 her sex. And her besetting vanity was endeavouring to 

 be a "lady." Work was sordid, for she wore garments 

 which made her the leader of fashion. She possessed a 

 pair of — well, a bifurcated garment — and her whole life was 

 spent in trying to live up to it — or them. She succeeded 

 to a certain extent. Her ways were mincing and precise, 

 and she lazed away her days quite artistically. A can of 

 water was too heavy for her to carry, less than two hours 

 "spell" at a time quite an offence to her ideal of the 

 amount of repose that a lady wearing the bifurcated 

 garment should permit herself. She was wont to sit in the 

 shade of the mango-tree and pretend to do a little garden- 

 ing. It was all pretence. What she really loved to do was 

 to wander among the bloodwoods — with Tom, of course — 

 with next to nothing on, the next to nothing being the 

 drawers. There, you have them. Then you saw her at her 

 best — or rather worst, for she was a thin sapling of a girl, 

 of a dull coppery colour, and the garment was not always 

 snowy-white. 



Hers, after all, was an ideal existence. She had plenty 

 to eat, as much tobacco as was good for her, and outer 

 raiment that in gaudiness outrivalled the flame-tree and 

 the yellow hibiscus. She was the favourite of two consorts, 

 and only when her pride and scorpion-like attributes got 

 the better of her was she corrected. 



Now, just the other morning, Tom announced that 

 " Little Jinny " was sick " along a bingey " (stomach), and 

 suggested that salt medicine might do her good. It was 

 quite a common occurrence for her to be sick. It 

 was such an easy and excellent excuse for a day's holiday, 



