Behaviour like this is intolerable, and it ought to be suppressed. My Maori friend, who found spitting a necessity, expectorated with grace. First she puckered up her lips to a pretty point, as if about to take the soprano at a whistling show. Then placing the tip of her tongue in juxtaposition with her teeth, she gave a sudden gentle, but decided contraction of her facial muscles. The only sound was a gentle click. From the initials S. M. upon her trunk, her name may have been Susan Macintosh. Susan could spit with grace. The sparkling thin spheroid, as it pursued its paraboloidal course, glittered in the sunlight with a meteoric brilliancy. But for Susan’s performance I should have felt dull and miserable.
Outside I could hear that Mac and Red Beard were becoming quite chummy, obtaining information from each other and the driver. This conversation, and an occasional ‘Git ep,’ addressed to the horses, was all that I could hear.
After about twenty-five miles Susan, who had been watching my attempts to write, asked me what I was noting. I felt that I was suspected of describing objects belonging to my companion. I replied:
‘I’m writing, madam, on the trajectory of a fluid projectile passing rapidly through a yielding but non-viscous medium.’
Madam glared, gave another spit, and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, said:
‘Do you mind showing me your book, young man?’
My writing was never good, and the jolting of the coach had made it worse, so I passed it to my companion. She looked at it a moment, then remarked that the road was very rough, and handed it back.
This is the only time that I ever felt thankful for having cultivated an illegible hand. Had it not been illegible, Susan might have slaughtered me.
Shortly after this, at the driver’s request, I sat on the same seat with Susan, who, keeping her feet on the opposite seat, propped her back against me and fell asleep. I now recognised why Red Beard sat outside. When she awoke I offered her a cigarette. She replied with a look. The reference to the customs of her uncivilized sisters had evidently given offence, and she did not speak again.
The distance to Cambridge was fifty-five miles, and it cost thirty shillings a head each way.