Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/51

 neighbors in the North. She knew, it appeared, an immense amount about this wild country. She was, she said scornfully, an old maid and she had first come out to this malignant country five years earlier with her brother who had promptly died of fever. She was now making this trip because she had to see the country where only Livingstone and one or two others had been before her.

The Lake tribes, she said, were peaceful black people, who lived by herding a few thin cattle and innumerable scraggy goats brought thither in some time which may well have been as remote as the Deluge. It was fertile land when there was rain and the people were comparatively rich and good-natured. Probably missionaries would find them easy to convert, as they had a childlike curiosity about new stories, and of course the Bible was filled with all sorts of fairy tales. (Again Philip saw Naomi wince and Swanson raise his stupid blue eyes in astonishment and horror.) The Lake people were not warlike; when their fierce neighbors of the North, who lived by robbery and war, came on a raid, the Lake people simply vanished into the bush, taking with them all their possessions, leaving behind only huts which might be burned but could be rebuilt again with little effort. Since the end of the Slave Trade, they had had a long period of peace.

Once Naomi interrupted her by saying, "Our experience with these people has been different. We've used only kindness and it's worked wonders. Of course, they thieve and they lie, but we've only been here three years and in the end we'll make them see that these things are sin."

Lady Millicent laid down her fork. "My dear