August worked and behaved well. She was wonderfully quick in picking up
English ways and housework. True, she was awkward and not over cleanly
in some things, but her mistress had patience with her.
Who wouldn't have? She "couldn't do enough" for her benefactress;
she hung on her words and sat at her footstool of evenings
in a way that gladdened the teacher's sentimental nature;
she couldn't bear to see him help his wife with a hat-pin or button --
August must do it. She insisted on doing her mistress' hair every night.
In short, she tried in every way to show her gratitude.
The teacher and his wife smiled brightly at each other behind her back,
and thought how cheerful the house was since she came,
and wondered what they'd do without her. It was a settled thing
that they should take her back to the city with them, and have
a faithful and grateful retainer all their lives and a sort of Aunt Chloe
for their children, when they had any. The teacher got yards of copy
out of her for his "Maori Sketches and Characters", worked joyously
at his romance, and felt great already, and was happy. She had a bed
made up temporarily (until the teacher could get a spring mattress for her
from town) on the floor in the dining-room, and when she'd made her bed
she'd squat on it in front of the fire and sing Maori songs in a soft voice.
She'd sing the teacher and his wife, in the next room, to sleep.
Then she'd get up and have a feed, but they never heard her.

Her manners at the table (for she was treated "like one of themselves"
in the broadest sense of the term) were surprisingly good,
considering that the adults of her people were decidedly cow-like
in white society, and scoffed sea-eggs, shell-fish, and mutton-birds at home
with a gallop which was not edifying. Her appetite, it was true,
was painful at times to the poetic side of the teacher's nature;
but he supposed that she'd been half-starved at home, poor girl,