Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/41

 expended passion, are very apt to run away again. Then the laborious business of tracking and catching them has to be undertaken anew, to the immense fatigue and annoyance of every one concerned. It is better, they urged, to let such people grow weary of the jungle at their leisure; then, in the fullness of time, they will return of their own free will.

The limitations of their intellects and vocabularies made it impossible for the Sâkai to express themselves quite as clearly as this, but the above represents the gist of their dispassionate opinions. They took several torturing hours and innumerable monosyllables to explain them to Kria, who gnashed and raved in his impatience.

"Pi-Noi is so excessively lîar," said that young woman's mamma, speaking with a sort of dreamy indifference while, with noisy nails, she tore at her scaly hide. "She is so incurably lîar that it would be better, Inche ' , to abandon her to the jungle and to take one of her sisters to wife in her stead. Jag-okN here," she added, indicating with outthrust chin a splay-faced little girl, who, in awful fashion, was cleaning fish with her fingers, "Jag-okN is hardly to be called lîar at all. Besides, she hates being beaten, and if you use a rod to her, she would make, I am convinced, a very obedient and amenable wife. We will let you have Jag-okN very cheap—say half the price you paid for Pi-Noi, her sister."

But Kria did not want Jag-okN, who was ill favoured and covered from tip to toe with skin diseases, at any price at all. He wanted her sister, who was still