a long time growing.

Having now established myself as one of the family, at the cost
of some disagreeable sensations and a pang or two of
self-disgust, I resolved to let nothing further trouble me at
Parahuari, but to live the easy, careless life of the idle man,
joining in hunting and fishing expeditions when in the mood; at
other times enjoying existence in my own way, apart from my
fellows, conversing with wild nature in that solitary place.
Besides Runi, there were, in our little community, two oldish
men, his cousins I believe, who had wives and grown-up children.
Another family consisted of Piake, Runi's nephew, his brother
Kua-ko--about whom there will be much to say--and a sister
Oalava. Piake had a wife and two children; Kua-ko was unmarried
and about nineteen or twenty years old; Oalava was the youngest
of the three. Last of all, who should perhaps have been first,
was Runi's mother, called Cla-cla, probably in imitation of the
cry of some bird, for in these latitudes a person is rarely,
perhaps never, called by his or her real name, which is a secret
jealously preserved, even from near relations. I believe that
Cla-cla herself was the only living being who knew the name her
parents had bestowed on her at birth. She was a very old woman,
spare in figure, brown as old sun-baked leather, her face written
over with innumerable wrinkles, and her long coarse hair
perfectly white; yet she was exceedingly active, and seemed to do
more work than any other woman in the community; more than that,
when the day's toil was over and nothing remained for the others
to do, then Cla-cla's night work would begin; and this was to
talk all the others, or at all events all the men, to sleep. She
was like a self-regulating machine, and punctually every evening,