"He was the cleanest man I ever knew. He never wore the same
undergarment a second time. I did the washing. He was so clean it
hurt. He shaved twice a day. He used more water on his body than
any kanaka. He did more work than any two haoles. And he saw the
future of the Nahala water."
"And he made you wealthy, but did not make you happy," Martha
observed.
Bella sighed and nodded.
"What is wealth after all, Sister Martha? My new Pierce-Arrow came
down on the steamer with me. My third in two years. But oh, all
the Pierce-Arrows and all the incomes in the world compared with a
lover!--the one lover, the one mate, to be married to, to toil
beside and suffer and joy beside, the one male man lover husband .
. . "
Her voice trailed off, and the sisters sat in soft silence while an
ancient crone, staff in hand, twisted, doubled, and shrunken under
a hundred years of living, hobbled across the lawn to them. Her
eyes, withered to scarcely more than peepholes, were sharp as a
mongoose's, and at Bella's feet she first sank down, in pure
Hawaiian mumbling and chanting a toothless mele of Bella and
Bella's ancestry and adding to it an extemporized welcome back to
Hawaii after her absence across the great sea to California.
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