Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/326

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310
CAYBIGAN

name, the attendance was rising by leaps and bounds; the schoolhouse was full of gentle brown goblins. Her soul was sweet with the feeling of being loved.

And yet she could not shake the old tyranny. An emptiness was within her; an emptiness it was, and yet it weighed like lead. Above, about her, the alien, incomprehensible Land flamed, fierce, inimical. She dreamed of grassy meadows beneath apple trees; through the flowering branches voices passed, voices of her own kin and race, sympathetic and intimate.

One day she had an idea that filled her with wild joy. She would give a dinner and invite Mr. Wilson and Mr. Tillman.

The invitations were sent and accepted. On Saturday she went to the market. She passed amid the squatting women like a humming bird, flitting hither and thither, stopping a moment to sip here or there, then whirring off again with her store. And when she returned, her tawny parasol tilted back upon her shoulder in an attitude a little weary, her two boys behind her bore baskets filled with wonderful and coloured things. She overhauled her stores and set to work immediately. A man she sent down to the sea to fish for her a lapo-lapo. And all day she measured and mixed and beat and prepared for the morrow. She was up with the sun the next day, and all morning she flitted about, humming like a bee building its