Jetta was nearly always alone. I can picture her sitting there within the narrow walls of her little room. Boy's ragged garb. All possible femininity stripped from her. Yet, within her, the woman's instincts were struggling. She sewed a great deal, she since has told me, there in the cloistered dimness. Making little dresses of silk and bits of finery given her surreptitiously by the neighbor women. Gazing at herself in them with the aid of a tiny mirror. Hiding them away, never daring to wear them openly; until at intervals her father would raid the room, find them and burn them in the kitchen incinerator.
"Instincts of Satan! By damn but I will get these woman's instincts out of you, Jetta!"
nd there were hours when she would try to read hidden books, and look at pictures of the strange fairy world of the Highlands. She could read and write a little: she had gone for a few years to the small Nareda government school, and then been snatched from it by her father.
When Spawn and I had finished that noonday meal, I recall that he left me for a moment. He had gone to Jetta.
"I am taking that young American to the mine. I will return presently. Stay close, Jetta."
"Yes, Father."
He left with me. Jetta remained in her room, her thoughts upon the coming night. She trembled at them. She would meet me again, this evening in the moonlit garden....
The sound of a man walking the garden path aroused her from her reverie. Then came a soft ingratiating voice: