“That’s right; now I shall have some real help and we shall get on famously. Nothing kept me back so much as that continual spinning every time my spool was empty.”
“Oh, but,” said Dalima, with a smile, and not without a touch of pride, “I can do a good deal more than spinning. You will see I can take my turn at the loom as well. I am a particularly good hand at painting on linen.”
“Indeed, I am glad to hear that; then you will be of the greatest use to me; for I must confess I am as yet rather awkward at it though I have improved very much since I began. Before we go and get dinner ready I must show you some of my productions in that line.”
Thus chatting, the girls went on working diligently for another couple of hours until it became time to go to the kitchen. In that department also, everything was poor enough. It required no very elaborate cookery-book to prepare their simple meal. Dalima would not allow her Nana to have any hand whatever in the cooking. She took the basket of raw rice, ran to the brook which flowed hard by, thoroughly washed the grains until the water ran off clear through the basket. Then she put the koekoesan on the fire in a dangdang, wrapped a little salt fish with herbs and Spanish pepper in pisang leaves to make pèpèsan ikan, and roasted them slightly over the glowing coal fire. Next she toasted a few strips of meat and had everything ready long before the rice was done.
“Now, Nana,” she asked as she looked around, “where is our table and the table-linen? I want to lay the cloth.”
“You forget, it seems, Dalima, that I have turned Javanese. If I wish to remain unknown, I must conform, in every respect, to the manners and customs of our dessa-people There is my table and these are my knife and fork.”
Thus saying, Anna pointed downwards to the pandan mat which covered the floor and then held up her taper fingers.
Dalima heaved a deep sigh.
“But, Nana,” she asked, “can it be necessary for you to work and to live thus? Have you then no money at all?”
“Money!” replied Anna, who retained all her pride in the midst of her adversity, “I have plenty of money, I am very well off, I might indeed call myself rich for one in my position. But you must not forget that I am in hiding; and that if I did not work and did not live exactly like the natives, they would begin to suspect me and then my hiding-place would very soon be discovered. Moreover, who can tell what the future may have in store; the day may come when that money which I now so carefully hoard, though you may perhaps think me stingy, may be of the greatest use to us?”