lid clashed inside the house, and a tall negress, dressed in a
blue-striped Mother Hubbard, came to the door. She stared at Simpson
and at the boy.

"_Qui_?" was all she said.

The boy sidled nearer her and dropped the bag on the threshold.

"_Qui_?" she said again.

Simpson waited in silence. His affairs had got beyond him somehow, and
he seemed to himself but the tool of circumstance. It did occur to
him, though dimly, that he was being introduced to native life rather
quickly.

The cripple, squatting with his back against the bag, launched into a
stream of patois, of which Simpson could not understand a word.
Gestures explained somewhat; he was reenacting the scenes of the last
half hour. When he had finished, the negress, not so hostile as she
had been but by no means friendly, turned to Simpson and looked at him
a long time without speaking. He had all he could do not to fidget
under her gaze; finally, she stood aside from the door and said,
without enthusiasm:

"_B'en venu. C'est vo' masson_."

Simpson entered automatically. The kitchen, with its hard earth floor
and the sunlight drifting in through the bamboo sides, was not
unclean, and a savoury smell came from the stew-pot on the ramshackle
stove. In one of the bars of sunlight a mango-coloured child of two
years or so was playing with his toes--he was surprisingly clean and
perfectly formed.

"_Aha, mon petit_!" exclaimed Simpson. He loved children. "He is
handsome," he added, addressing the woman.

"Mine!" She turned the baby gently with her foot; he caught at the hem
of her dress, laughing. But she did not laugh. "Neither spot nor
blemish," she said, and then: "He is not yet three years old."

Simpson shuddered, recalling the pock-marked drummer on the
_Arequipa_. That was momentary--a coincidence, he told himself. The
woman was looking down at the child, her eyes softer than they had
been, and the child was lying on its back and playing with her Mother
Hubbard.

The woman lifted the lid from the pot and peered into it through the
sun-shot steam.

"It is ready," she said. She lifted it from the stove and set it on
the earthen floor. The cripple placed a handful of knives and spoons
on the table and three tin plates; he thrust a long fork and a long
spoon into the pot and stood aside.

"Seat yourself," said the woman, without looking at Simpson, "and
eat."

She explored the pot with the fork, and stabbed it firmly--there was a
suggestion