For Tabitha knew all about this business
as she knew everything that passed in Sisa-Land. Moreover, she laughed
at them a little, and said that _she_ was not afraid to sleep in the
mission-house on the night of full moon.
What is more, she did so, which was naughty of her, for on one such
occasion she slipped back to the house when her parents were asleep,
followed only by her "night-dog," the watchful Ivana, and returned
at dawn just as they had discovered that she was missing, singing and
laughing and jumping from stone to stone with the agility of her own pet
goat.
"I slept beautifully," she cried, "and dreamed I was in heaven all
night."
Thomas was furious and rated her till she wept. Then suddenly Ivana
became furious too and rated him.
Should he be wrath with the Little Chieftainess Imba, she asked him,
because the _Isitunzis_, the spirits of the dead, loved her as did
everything else? Did they not understand that the Floweret was unlike
them, one adored of dead and living, one to be cherished even in her
dreams, one whom "Heaven Above," together with those who had "gone
below," built round with a wall of spells?--and more of such talk,
which Thomas thought so horrible and blasphemous that he fled before its
torrent.
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