Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/37

 herself, and kicking two rebellious bare legs joyously in the air.

He was horribly shocked and outraged; for though a naked Sâkai girl was one of the commonest sights in the valley, this girl was his wife, and he had been hugging to his heart the belief that she was rapidly developing into a decorous Malayan lady. Also bis eye, which had become accustomed to see her clad with the elaborate modesty of his own womenkind. saw in her pristine nudity an amazing impropriety. Feeling wrathful and disgraced, he rushed at her and tried to seize her, but she leaped to her feet in the twinkling of an eye and eluded him with forest-bred ease. He brought up short, panting hard, after an inglorious chase; and much petting, coaxing, and pleading were needed before he could lure her back into the house and persuade her to don even one short Malayan waist skirt. He had to fight his every instinct, for he longed to take a stick to her, being imbued with the Malay man's unshakable belief in the ability of the rod to inspire in a wife a proper sense of subordination; but he did not dare. Malayan women accept such happenings with the meekness which experience reserves for the inevitable; but in the forest Pi-Noi had a protector—a protector who never left her.

The compromise of the short waist skirt duly effected, things again went on smoothly for a space. Kria suspected that Pi-Noi broke the inadequate compact unblushingly whenever he was absent; but he loved the girl more madly every day, and