wise it call”) the greater portion of our harvest of peaches. Peace be with her! On our way back she made amends after her own fashion with a cake—made after her own fashion, also; it must have had pounds of butter in it. “That’s the worst of Ma Quin—never no reasonableness with her,” Mr. Black observed, on getting clear of his first and only mouthful. “Got a tongue o’ leather that’ll never wear out, an’ yet a heart o’ gold; do hanythink for you if you was sick—an’ then go and make you sick with truck like this ’ere. Got no moderation, the old lady hasn’t.” Well, and she was in consequence much more interesting than some people one meets, who have nothing else! I missed “Ma Quin.”
After they went I was the only woman aboard, and remained so for nearly all the rest of the trip. People have sometimes asked me whether I did not find the position awkward. Never; not a bit! there was nothing to make it so. The crew were a steady, respectable set of men—upon that point the captain was particular; I never heard a foul word from any one of them all the time I was aboard; and the Tikirau carried no liquor. “I suppose, then, you were treated as a kind of princess?” has been sometimes an alternative suggestion, to which, “Not a bit!” is again the answer. No; I was treated just as an ordinary woman is ordinarily treated in New Zealand by her male fellow-citizens—that is, with a frank friendliness; respectful because self-respecting, easy without familiarity, and probably due, partly at any rate, to the political equality of the sexes—certainly not in the very least endangered by it. Nothing, perhaps, in all
