summer; I’m sure it was warmer then; I’m sure the climate’s changed—without I have. On our heads we’d have dungaree hoods because o’ the ‘lawyer’ a-catchin’ at us in the Bush, an’ us children always went barefoot, like the Maoris.
“There isn’t a Maori left in the Bay now, as you know—not a full-blooded one. Some they went to the North Island; most is dead. . . well, well! But in them days there was a pretty big pa of ’em back there in the Bush, an’ in spite of all poor mother could do, it was my dear delight to get to it. Mother, she was good to ’em, though, mind you! Once she even dressed old Marama’s hair up in braids, just like her own—an’ can’t I see old Marama yet, a-pattin’ of her head so proud, an’ a-sayin’, ‘All a-same te Pakeha, all a-same te Pakeha,’ an’ never took it down, bless you, for a week.
“I remember Marama cookin’ hapuka once. She’d a great iron pot, an’ what did she put in first of all but a great heap of this here sow-thistle, an’ on top of that the fish, all washed an’ scaled, an’ then fills up the pot with more sow-thistle an’ a little water, an’ steams it; an’ when it was ready we all sat round on the ground in a circle, an’ Marama she tipped the pot right out on the ground in the middle, so that the fish lay on the sow-thistle; an’ we all took what we wanted—no forks nor plates nor nothin’—an’, my word, it was good! You’d ha’ thought the sow-thistle would ha’ ruined the taste of everythin’, nasty, bitter stuff; but it didn’t.
“How them Maoris did use to catch fish too! They was the ones, my word! I’ve a-seen a Maori man a-layin’ down on a rock over the sea with a bare hook in his hand, no bait—an’ him a-bendin’
