Blanche Edith Baughan

“ A fish? why, the creature is nothing at all but an empty cockle-shell not worth the digging. And Pipi is just thinking that she shall soon feel too tired to walk a single step farther, when, suddenly producing a small, sweetly-familiar-looking packet from her coat, “You like cigarettes?” inquires the pakeha.
“Ai! Homai te hikarete! Ka pat te hikarete! (“Yes! Give me a cigarette! I do like cigarettes) ,” cries Pipi, enraptured, and the pakeha holds out the packet. Alas! there are only two cigarettes left in it, and manners will permit of Pipi’s taking only one. ”

“ Pipi was very happy. To an indifferent observer, it is true, the little mummy-like old Maori woman, bundled about with a curious muddle of rag-bag jackets and petticoats, and hobbling along the high-road on crippled bare brown feet, might have presented a spectacle more forlorn than otherwise. But then, what does the indifferent observer ever really see? ”

“ The truant who should suddenly see his captured “bully” pull the hook out of its jaws in order to plunge it in his own, might very well feel as Pipi felt at this frightful moment. True enough, she had often heard Miria speak of the pakeha lady who came to visit Mrs. Cameron and was “always so interested in the natives;” and with the greatest care she had always kept out of her way, for Pipi had her pride—she resented being made into a show. And now———!
“Yes, and I have often seen you, too, though you may not have seen me,” pursued the relentless pakeha. “You, and little Hana and Himi. ”

“ Ah, and perhaps he had topeka with him, too, real, good, dark, strong topeka in a stick; and, had Pipi only been wise enough to wait for him, and let this miserable person go by, she might by now, perhaps, have been having a real smoke. As for this hikarete, by the smell of it, Hana, aged thirteen months, could smoke it with impunity. No coat, no kai, no hikapeni, one hikarete of hay—Huh! the unprofitableness of this pakeha!
“You go on!” says Pipi, with an authoritative gesture. They have got as far as the bridge, and she squats down by her swamp. All that long hill to toil up again, too! ”

“ The girl denies it, of course, as Pipi knew she would: these pakeha women always do, and Miria, their slavish advocate and copyist, declares they speak the truth. Vain words; for, in the hotel at Rotorua, has not Pipi seen the very best attired of them at it? Moreover, why should this girl trouble to carry cigarettes if she does not smoke, herself? Plenty stupid, these pakeha women! Plenty good, however, their cigarettes, and greed (oh Miria!) overcoming manners, “E! You not smoke ”

“ But behold, the black-hearted one at her side says, actually, “Oh, I’m in no particular hurry. I think I’ll sit down a bit, too,” and does so. Now, who that has found the riwai (potato) rotten wants to look at the rind? ”