people's heads; besides, she is a goose. She is younger than I am, although you would think her so much older, for her hair turned grey when she was very young, while mine is quite black still. She is almost bald too, now. as she pulled out her hair because it was grey. I always said to her, 'Don't do so; for you can't make yourself any younger, and it is better when you are getting old to look old. Then people will do whatever you ask them! But however old you may be, if you look young, they'll say to you, "You are young enough and strong enough to do your own work yourself."'
My mother used to tell us stories too; but not so many as my granny. A few years ago there might be found several old people who knew those sort of stories; but now children go to school, and nobody thinks of remembering or telling them—they'll soon be all forgotten. It is true there are books with some stories something like these, but they always put them down wrong. Sometimes, when I cannot remember a bit of a story, I ask some one about it; then they say, 'There is a story of that name in my book. I don't know it, but I'll read.' Then they read it to me, but it is all wrong, so that I get quite cross, and make them shut up the book. For in the books they cut the stories quite short, and leave out the prettiest part, and they jumble up the beginning of one story with the end of another—so that it is altogether wrong.
When I was young, old people used to be very fond of telling these stories; but instead of that, it seems to me that now the old people are fond of nothing but making money.
Then I was married. I was twelve years old then. Our native people have a very happy life till we marry. The girls live with their father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and have got nothing to do but amuse themselves, and got father and mother to take care of them; but after they're married they go to live at their husband's house, and the husband's mother and sisters are often very unkind to them.
You English people can't understand that sort of thing. When an Englishman marries, he goes to a new house, and his wife is the mistress of it; but our native people are very different. If the father is dead, the mother and unmarried sisters live in the son's house, and rule it; his wife is nothing in the house. And the mother and sisters say to the son's wife, 'This is not your house—you've not always lived in it;—you cannot be mistress here.'
