Isabel M. Peacocke

“ But Tiki was a contented little boy, and he couldn't think of anything nicer to eat than a handful of ripe puriri berries, or the root of a young fern.
"Oh, Tiki, aren't you sick of eating the same old foods for ever and ever!"
"But what else could we eat?" he asked, "There isn't anything else!"
"Of course there is—lots and lots," answered Swanki. "There's mince pie and ham sandwiches and jam tarts and vinegar and plum duff and cakes and pickled cabbages." [Pg 16]
"So they all ran off and collected puriri berries." ”

“ And then People began to come about, so tiresome! They began to make houses, sell things in shops, tear about in big boxes on wheels, and send great, clattering, shrieking, [Pg 6] puffing monsters rushing through the country, dropping smoke and cinders like anything. There was such a clatter and a chatter, such gabbling and babbling, such hammering and banging and laughing and crying, and hurry and scurry and rush that it was enough to drive one crazy. There was such a fuss, the Piccaninnies simply couldn't stand it, and they fled to the Bush. ”

“ On the very edge of the bush, however, she hesitated. She had been born in the bush, and was used only to its cool green shade, and the glare of the sun on the outside world rather scared her. So after hanging about for a time to see what the Piccaninnies intended doing, she flitted away after a large blue fly, and while she was busy Tiki and Swanki gave her the slip. They, too, had been rather dismayed at the glare of the sun and the shelterless look of the outside world, but Tiki said that the Pickled Cabbage trees were not far away ”

“ She smoothed it out and looked at it carefully, and then she called the other girls to look at it. And soon there was such a clattering and chattering that the boys came racing that way to see if the girls had found anything good to eat. You know boys!
The scrap of paper was a page out of a fashion book, and there were pictures on it of horrid little smug-faced boys in sky-blue suits bowling hoops in a way no real little boy ever bowled a hoop in his life, and simpering little girls in lace frocks holding dolls or sun-shades in un-natural attitudes.
But the Piccaninnies were delighted. ”

“ Then she can dance no more, but lies very still. It is rather sad, because once she has let go she may not go back and dance on the tree for a whole long year, and it is looked on rather as a disgrace to be the first to fall. ”

“ It's much easier to slide down a fern-leaf, or jump off the end of a branch if you haven't any clothes—everyone knows that.
But when the girls, after being absent for hours, came back all in darling little crimson kilts made out of blossoms from the Christmas tree, the boys simply couldn't bear to think the girls had something they hadn't got. You know what boys are! [Pg 10]
After laughing at the girls in the hopes they'd throw away their pretty little frocks, the boys went off together. They simply had to think of something, and it would never do to copy the girls. ”

“ The Piccaninnies who had lived in that part of the bush could never again return to the cool green shades of the forest, never slide down a fern leaf, or swing on the branches, or pick puriri berries, or pelt the morepork in the daytime. ”

“ The hats were rather silly, because the Piccaninnies lived so deep in the Bush that the sun couldn't hurt them, but then fashions are absurd. (Look at the ladies who wear fur coats in hot climates!)
The boys made no change because their kind of fashion doesn't change, except sometimes you take great pains to iron the crease out of them, and other times you iron it in most carefull-ee.
For some reason the boys didn't like the girls' change of frocks. Of course, they said, the girls would never play with them now, but the girls said oh yes, they would. ”

“ The Great Red Enemy is coming. He is roaring with anger and tearing the trees down as he comes. None of us can hope to escape him, for he has a million bright red eyes which he sends flying through the bush in all directions to find us, and his breath is so thick that we will be lost in it if we don't run now. Run! Run!"
The Piccaninnies did not wait to be told twice. Without waiting to pack up they slid down the trees and started to run through the [Pg 43] dark bush, and soon there were hundreds of little bush creatures all joining in the race for life. ”

“ And then People came into the Bush! Did you ever!
The Piccaninnies took to the trees altogether then, and no wonder!
II.
And then one day some one in a picnic party left a scrap of paper blowing about—you know the horrid way picnic parties have!—and a Piccaninny found it.
"To be sure they were looking at the pictures upside down, but that made no real difference."
As luck would have it, it was a girl Picca [Pg 8] [Pg 7] ninny; had it been a boy he would simply have torn it up and made paper darts with it to throw at the other boys, and no harm would have been done. But girls are different! ”

“ They had also stuck some of the red-brown flowers in their hair. The girls were vexed that they hadn't thought of that, but they went one better. They made strings of the scarlet nikau berries and hung them round their necks. (Trust the girls!)
And that was how Fashions came to be started in the Bush.
[Pg 11]
CLEMATIS.
f course fashions change, and no one need be surprised to find that crimson kilts were soon "out," while the Piccaninny girls were to be seen walking about in pretty little white, frilly petticoats made out of clematis blossoms, and sun hats of the same flowers. ”