mona lisa

cecil de vada

E.E.

Only people who have sojourned for a time in Africa's wilds can know what a problem native servants are. They can be hired for wages that are far from being munificent. But it matters not what the wages might be, their employer is seldom satisfied with the way the native performs his or her menial tasks; a good native menial is about as rare as a pearl in an oyster.

My husband is a big game hunter and it was on our sixth trip to Africa that it came our way to acquire Mona Lisa. She was the pearl in the oyster for us. Her native name, Moaba, did not strike my fancy for the kind of native belle she was. So I named her to suit myself-Mona Lisa. And she responded well to it.

Mona was tall, slim and graceful of carriage and the loveliest dark girl we had seen in our six visits to Africa. Her facial features were more on the order of the Polynesian than the African. Through brief training at a missionary's camp she had overcome all the natural shyness of the native girl. When you spoke to her she looked straight at you, her frank, petite gaze made you feel her inner loveliness, intelligence and character.

At the mission she had been taught to wear becoming civilized clothes which accentuated her symmetry. She was an all-around menial for both of us, for Sam, my husband, and me. She housecleaned, cooked, shopped, laundered and mended, all which she did with a deft neatness foreign to the native servant. Mona could have had numerous amorous affairs, but she didn't: this when she could have taken her pick of a hundred stalwart Kaffirs. But she gave them no notice. This I thought a bit odd until I learned she was pledged to the oldest son of a tribal chief living in a village nearly a hundred miles from our household site. In time my innate curiosity prompted me to question Mona about this enforced betrothel. Instead of looking straight at me with her dreamy, soulful gaze, she looked sideways. Seeing that it distressed her, I didn't press the matter. But after that I abhorred all native customs.

It was a bit odd, the way we asked each other's forgiveness, a way no other mistress and servant did it. I stepped up to her, placed my arm about her and

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