Who that does not know them will believe that under their domestic system I had the best broth and the best tea I have ever tasted!  They are very cunning brewers and sagacious buyers too; their maxims show them to direct all their acuteness upon obtaining quality for their money.  A compliment not backed by silver is hardly intelligible to the pretty ones:  money is a really credible thing to them; and when they have it, they know how to use it.  Apparently because they know so well, so perfectly appreciating it, they have only vague ideas of a corresponding sentiment on the opposite side to the bargain, and imagine that they fool people much more often than they succeed in doing.  Once duped themselves, they are the wariest of the dog-burnt; the place is notched where it occurred, and for ever avoided.  On the other hand, they repose implicit faith in a reputation vouched for by their experience.  I was amused by the girl Eveleen’s dotting of houses over the breadth of five counties, where for this and that article of apparel she designed to expend portions of a golden guinea, confident that she would get the very best, and a shilling besides.  The unwonted coin gave her the joy of supposing she cheated the Mint of that sum.  This guinea was a present to the girl (to whom I owed my thrashing, by the way) that excused itself under cover of being a bribe for sight of a mirror interdicted by the implacable Kiomi.  I wanted to have a look at my face.  Now that the familiar scenes were beginning to wear their original features to me, my dread of personal hideousness was distressing, though Eveleen declared the bad blood in my cheeks and eyes ’had been sucked by pounds of red meat.’  I wondered, whether if I stood up and walked to either one of the three great halls lying in an obtuse triangle within view, I should easily be recognized.  When I did see myself, I groaned verily.  With the silence of profound resignation, I handed back to Eveleen the curious fragment of her boudoir, which would have grimaced at Helen of Troy.

‘You’re feeling your nose—­you’ve been looking at a glass!’ Kiomi said, with supernatural swiftness of deduction on her return.

She added for my comfort that nothing was broken, but confessed me to be still ‘a sight’; and thereupon drove knotty language at Eveleen.  The girl retorted, and though these two would never acknowledge to me that any of their men had been in this neighbourhood recently, the fact was treated as a matter of course in their spiteful altercation, and each saddled the other with the mistake they had committed.  Eveleen snatched the last word.  What she said I did not comprehend, she must have hit hard.  Kiomi’s eyes lightened, and her lips twitched; she coloured like the roofing smoke of the tent fire; twice she showed her teeth, as in a spasm, struck to the heart, unable to speak, breathing in and out of a bitterly disjoined mouth.  Eveleen ran.  I guessed at the ill-word spoken.  Kiomi sat eyeing the wood-ashes, a devouring gaze that shot straight and read but one thing.  They who have seen wild creatures die will have her before them, saving the fiery eyes.  She became an ashen-colour, I took her little hand.  Unconscious of me, her brown fingers clutching at mine, she flung up her nostrils, craving air.