dle the boat. They passed back under the big bridges, one by one, gliding into the darkness and shooting out again into the golden sunlight. Rhamon watched the busy life on the shore and listened to the many sounds across the water.
He saw women coming down to the river's edge with great jars on their shoulders, and he heard them laughing and talking as they filled these jars with water.
"Slosh, slosh; whack, whack!" That was the laundryman washing his clothes in the river and beating them clean against the stone steps.
"Thud—thud—thud—thud!" That was a slow sound that Rhamon knew well, for he heard it every day. It came from a group of women on the shore who were pounding their rice. He watched them as they raised the heavy wooden poles and let them fall on the rice in the big stone bowls. It was hard and tiresome work. Often he wished he were big and strong enough to help his mother grind their daily rice.
The boat slid along and Rhamon did not
