They crouched upon their heels, one on either side of a handmill, in which they were husking "paddy," or rice in the original state, for the next family meal.
The handmill consisted of two hollow wooden receptacles, the upper one furnished with two handles, by which the girls worked it half round to the right and back to the left. This threw the grain through the grooved sides into the lower vessel, grinding the chaff off on its way. From the lower bowl it escaped to the floor through a hole in the bottom.
From the heap thus accumulated, a child emptied the rice into baskets, pouring it from one into another until the husk was fairly well winnowed from it; and then threw it into a mortar, sunk into the ground, and in which a heavy pestle worked by means of a long lever affixed to it, upon the end of which a graceful maiden was balancing herself, thus working it up and down to the time of a monotonous song which she chanted to herself—
"Oh! rice ka la! come!
Oh! rice ka la! come!
Mee Meht calls you, come, come!"
The rice grain gleamed white as pearls from among the dusky chaff as she worked; and ever and anon, with some joke from one or the other, the girlish voices bubbled over into a merry laugh.
"They seem happy," said Ralph.
"Ay, they do," Kirke replied, "but they are like animals,—they do not 'look before and after.'"