visitors, and children; two cows--small native animals that do not
produce milk--occupied the apartment on the other side of the
partition; goats, fowls, cats, rats, cockroaches, and centipedes were
everywhere. In her own room the three boys slept behind an erection of
boxes and furniture, and the two girls shared her portion. Every night
her belongings had to be taken outside in order to provide sufficient
accommodation for them all, and as it was the wet season they had
usually to undergo a process of drying in the sun each day before being
replaced.

There was a ceaseless coming and going in the yard, a perpetual
chattering of raucous voices. The wives were always bickering and
scolding, the tongue of one of them going day and night, her chief butt
being a naked and sickly slave, who was for ever being flogged. There
was no sleep for Mary when this woman had any grievance, real or
imaginary, on her mind.

Both wives and visitors conceived it their duty to sit and entertain
their white guest. To an African woman the idea of loneliness is
terrible, and good manners made it incumbent that as large a gathering
as possible should keep a stranger company. All is implied in the word
"home," its sacredness and freedom, its privacy, lies outside the
knowledge and experience of polygamists. Kind and neighbourly as the
women were, they could not understand the desire of Mary to be
sometimes by herself. She needed silence and solitude; her spirit
craved for communion with her Father, and she longed for a place in
which to pour out her heart aloud to Him. As often as politeness
permitted, she fled to the ground reserved for her, but they followed
her there, and in desperation she would take a machete and hack at the
bush, praying the while, so that her voice was lost in the noise she