ride two hundred miles between side and side of the ranch. And in
the big house servants beyond remembering or counting. La la, in
my mother's house were many servants."

Mercedes Higgins was voluble as a Greek, and wandered on in
reminiscence.

"But our servants were lazy and dirty. The Chinese are the
servants par excellence. So are the Japanese, when you find a
good one, but not so good as the Chinese. The Japanese
maidservants are pretty and merry, but you never know the moment
they'll leave you. The Hindoos are not strong, but very obedient.
They look upon sahibs and memsahibs as gods! I was a
memsahib--which means woman. I once had a Russian cook who always
spat in the soup for luck. It was very funny. But we put up with
it. It was the custom."

"How you must have traveled to have such strange servants!" Saxon
encouraged.

The old woman laughed corroboration.

"And the strangest of all, down in the South Seas, black slaves,
little kinky-haired cannibals with bones through their noses.
When they did not mind, or when they stole, they were tied up to
a cocoanut palm behind the compound and lashed with whips of
rhinoceros hide. They were from an island of cannibals and
head-hunters, and they never cried out. It was their pride. There
was little Vibi, only twelve years old--he waited on me--and when
his back was cut in shreds and I wept over him, he would only