"What do
you want to be so infernally cautious for? Do you want to go on living?"
"I'm glad you consider me wiser than yourself," I answered.
"Well, don't let us quarrel over a trifle," he said.
Those were his words, not mine; if he had wished to quarrel, I for my
part had no wish to prevent him. I was beginning to feel some dislike
for him for his incautious behavior, and for his manner with women. Only
the night before, I had been walking quietly along with Maggie, the
Tamil girl that was my friend, and we were both as happy as could be.
Glahn sits outside his hut, and nods and smiles to us as we pass. It was
then that Maggie saw him for the first time, and she was very
inquisitive about him. So great an impression had he made on her that,
when it was time to go, we went each our own way; she did not go back
home with me.
Glahn would have put this by as of no importance when I spoke to him
about it. But I did not forget it. And it was not to me that he nodded
and smiled as we passed by the hut! it was to Maggie.
"What's that she chews?" he asked me.
"I don't know," I answered. "She chews--I suppose that's what her teeth
are for."
And it was no news to me either that Maggie was always chewing
something; I had noticed it long before. But it was not betel she was
chewing, for her teeth were quite white; she had, however, a habit of
chewing all sorts of other things--putting them in her mouth and chewing
as if they were something nice.
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