“I’m glad to hear you speak well of her,” said Rooney, “for I don’t like to think ill of any one if I can help it; but sometimes I can’t help it. Now, there’s your angekok Ujarak: I cannot think well of him. Have you a good word to say in his favour?”
“No, not one. He is bad through and through—from the skin to the bone. I know him well,” said Nuna, with a flourish of her cooking-stick that almost overturned the lamp.
“But you may be mistaken,” remarked Rooney, smiling. “You are mistaken even in the matter of his body, to say nothing of his spirit.”
“How so?” asked Nuna quickly.
“You said he is bad through and through. From skin to bone is not through and through. To be quite correct, you must go from skin to marrow.”
Nuna acknowledged this by violently plunging her cooking-stick into the pot.
“Well now, Nuna,” continued Rooney, in a confidential tone, “tell me—”
At that moment he was interrupted by the entrance of the master of the mansion, who quietly sat down on another skull close to his friend.
“I was just going to ask your wife, Okiok, what she and you think of this business of making an angekok of poor Ippegoo,” said Rooney.
“We think it is like a seal with its tail where its head should be, its skin in its stomach, and all its bones outside; all nonsense—foolishness,” answered Okiok, with more of indignation in his look and tone than he was wont to display.