Let de lil ones come unto me!”
“Mind de dress-basket don’t drop down, deah, an’ spoil our clo’,” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed, indicating a cowskin trunk that seemed to be in peril of falling; for, from motives of economy and ease, it had been decided that not before Cuna-Cuna should rear her queenly towers above them would they change their floral garlands for the more artificial fabrics of the town, and, when Edna, vastly to her importance, should go into a pair of frilled “invisibles” and a petticoat for the first amazing time; nor, indeed, would Mr. Mouth himself take “to de pants,” until his wife and daughters should have assumed their skirts. But this, from the languid pace at which their vehicle proceeded, was unlikely to be just yet. In the torrid tropic noontime, haste, however, was quite out of the question. Bordered by hills, long, yellow and low, the wooded savannah rolled away beneath a blaze of trembling heat.
“I don’t t’ink much ob dis part of de country,” Mrs. Mouth commented. “All dese common palms ... de cedar wood-tree, dat my tree. Dat is de timber I prefer.”
“An’ some,” Edna pertly smiled, “dey like best de bamboo....”
A remark that was rewarded by a blow on the ear.
“Now she set up a hullabaloo like de time de scorpion bit her botty,” Mrs. Mouth lamented, and, indeed, the uproar made, alarmed from the boskage a cloud of winsome soldier-birds and inquisitive parroquets.
“Oh my God,” Mr. Mouth exclaimed. “What for you make all dat dere noise?” But his daughter paid no attention, and soon sobbed herself to sleep.
Advancing through tracks of acacia-scrub, or groves of nutmeg-trees, they jolted along in the gay, exalting sunlight. Flowers brighter than love, wafting the odour of spices, strewed in profusion the long guinea-grass on either side of the way.
“All dose sweet aprons, if it weren’t fo’ de flies!” Mrs. Mouth murmured, regarding some heavy, ambered, Trumpet flowers, with a covetous eye.