"And when you pray and scatter meal out of this,"—pointing to the bowl,—"does the rain always come?"
"Always."
"Why, then, did it not rain last summer?"
"That I cannot tell you," said the woman. "Only the Shiuana know. Besides, there are bad people who stop the rain from coming."
"How can they do that?" cried both Okoya and Mitsha in surprise, neither of them having heard as yet of such a thing.
"I must not tell you that," said Hannay, with a mysterious and important air; "you are too young to know it. Tell me, Okoya,"—her voice changed with the change of the subject,—"does Shotaye Koitza often come to see your mother?"
This question was highly imprudent. But Hannay was often imprudent. Smart and sly in a certain way, she was equally thoughtless in other matters. The query so sudden, so abrupt, and so uncalled for must, she ought to have foreseen, look extremely suspicious. And yet Okoya was on the point of answering, "She was at our home a few days ago." In time, however, he bethought himself of the warnings she had received, and replied in an unsteady tone,—
Hannay noticed his embarrassed manner, and saw at a glance that he was forewarned. The "no" of the boy told her "yes." The discovery, however, that Okoya was on his guard was rather disagreeable; it angered her so much that her first impulse was to send him away. But she soon changed her mind. The youth was obedient; and if now he obeyed the counsels of his people, why might he not later on become accustomed to submission to his wife's people also? At all events he was good-natured, and according to Hannay's conceptions, good-natured folk were always silly. That smart but ill-natured persons might also prove extremely silly on occasions was far from her thoughts, and yet the very question she had imprudently put to Okoya was an instance of it.
It did not occur to her that it might yet be problematic whether Okoya would ever become a traitor to his own people. She could not conceive how anybody might be different from her and from Tyope, and of course she had no doubt concerning his ultimate pliability. And she relied also upon the influence Mitsha would exert upon her future husband, taking it for granted that her child had the same low standards as her parents. That child Hannay regarded merely as a resource,—as valuable property, marketable and to be disposed of to the most suitable bidder. In her eyes Okoya appeared as a very desirable one.