After the feast, Jack, for Maggie's entertainment, tried to get up the
blacks to engage in a corroboree, and give an exhibition of boomerang
and spear-throwing; but the inner man had been too largely satisfied,
and they declined violent exertion, so the toys were distributed and our
guests dismissed.
When she and I were dressing that evening for our own Christmas dinner,
Maggie kept talking all the time of the strange experience she had
passed through that day.
[Sidenote: A Striking Picture]
"I'll never forget it," she said. "Savages are so different from our
English ideas of them. Did you notice the dogs? I counted nineteen go
off with the first native that left. And the women! Weren't they
horrors? I don't think I'll ever feel pride in my sex again. But above
all, I'll never forget the way in which Jack drove from the table that
native who hadn't a clean shirt on. It was a picture of Christ's parable
of the 'Marriage Feast,'" she added softly.
Before I could reply the gong, strengthened by Jack's imperative "Hurry
up, I'm starving," summoned us to dinner.
[Sidenote: A story of Sedgemoor times and of a woman who was both a
saint and a heroine.]
My Mistress Elizabeth
BY
ANNIE ARMITT
I committed a great folly when I was young and ignorant; for I left my
father's house and hid myself in London only that I might escape the
match he desired to make for me.
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