XXXIII

One day when Rarahu was walking with me in one of the shady avenues of the town, she bid good-day in a way half-friendly, half-scornful, and a little frightened too, to an outlandish creature who passed us. It was a tall thin woman, with nothing of the Tahitian about her but the costume; she bowed in return with stiff dignity, and turned round to look 51at us. Rarahu, much vexed, put out her tongue at her, and then she told me that this old maid, a half-breed, a lanky mixture of English and Maori, had been her teacher at the school at Papeete.