Next morning the two invalids were tenderly conveyed on litters down the mountain side and over the plain, and before the afternoon had passed away, they found a pleasant temporary resting-place in the now Christian village.
Chapter Fourteen.
The slopes and knolls and palm-fringed cliffs of Ratinga were tipped with gold by the western sun one evening as he declined towards his bed in the Pacific, when Marie Zeppa wandered with Betsy Waroonga and her brown little daughter Zariffa towards the strip of bright sand in front of the village.
The two matrons, besides being filled with somewhat similar anxieties as to absent ones, were naturally sympathetic, and frequently sought each other’s company. The lively Anglo-French woman, whose vivacity was not altogether subdued even by the dark cloud that hung over her husband’s fate, took special pleasure in the sedate, earnest temperament of her native missionary friend, whose difficulty in understanding a joke, coupled with her inability to control her laughter when, after painful explanation, she did manage to comprehend one, was a source of much interest—an under-current, as it were, of quiet amusement.
“Betsy,” said Marie, as they walked slowly along, their naked feet just laved by the rippling sea, “why do you persist in wearing that absurd bonnet? If you would only let me cut four inches off the crown and six off the front, it would be much more becoming. Do let me, there’s a dear. You know I was accustomed to cutting and shaping when in England.”
“But what for the use?” asked Betsy, turning her large brown eyes solemnly on her companion. “It no seems too big to me. Besides, when brudder Gubbins give him to me he—”
“Who is brudder Gubbins?” asked Marie, with a look of smiling surprise.
“Oh! you know. The min’ster—Gubbins—what come to the mission-station just afore me an’ Waroonga left for Ratinga.”