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scooter, and discovered the intoxications of speed. All day he would fly around the homestead, in and out of flowerbeds, scattering squawking chickens and irritated dogs, finishing with a wide dizzying arc into the kitchen door. There he would cry: ‘Gideon, look at me!’ And Gideon would laugh and say: ‘Very clever, Little Yellow Head.’ Gideon’s youngest son, who was now a herdsboy, came especially up from the compound to see the scooter. He was afraid to come near it, but Teddy showed off in front of him. ‘Piccanin,’ shouted Teddy, ‘get out of my way!’ And he raced in circles around the black child until he was frightened, and fled back to the bush.
    â€˜Why did you frighten him?’ asked Gideon, gravely reproachful.
    Teddy said defiantly: ‘He’s only a black boy,’ and laughed. Then, when Gideon turned away from him without speaking, his face fell. Very soon he slipped into the house and found an orange and brought it to Gideon, saying: ‘This is for you.’ He could not bring himself to say he was sorry; but he could not bear to lose Gideon’s affection either. Gideon took the orange unwillingly and sighed. ‘Soon you will be going away to school, Little Yellow Head,’ he said wonderingly, ‘and then you will be grown up.’ He shook his head gently and said, ‘And that is how our lives go.’ He seemed to be putting a distance betweenhimself and Teddy, not because of resentment, but in the way a person accepts something inevitable. The baby had lain in his arms and smiled up into his face: the tiny boy had swung from his shoulders, had played with him by the hour. Now Gideon would not let his flesh touch the flesh of the white child. He was kind, but there was a grave formality in his voice that made Teddy pout and sulk away. Also, it made him into a man: with Gideon he was polite, and carried himself formally, and if he came into the kitchen to ask for something, it was in the way a white man uses towards a servant, expecting to be obeyed.
    But on the day that Teddy came staggering into the kitchen with his fists to his eyes, shrieking with pain, Gideon dropped the pot full of hot soup that he was holding, rushed to the child, and forced aside his fingers. ‘A snake!’ he exclaimed. Teddy had been on his scooter, and had come to a rest with his foot on the side of a big tub of plants. A tree-snake, hanging by its tail from the roof, had spat full into his eyes. Mrs Farquar came running when she heard the commotion. ‘He’ll go blind,’ she sobbed, holding Teddy close against her. ‘Gideon, he’ll go blind!’ Already the eyes, with perhaps half an hour’s sight left in them, were swollen up to the size of fists: Teddy’s small white face was distorted by great purple oozing protuberances. Gideon said: ‘Wait a minute, missus, I’ll get some medicine.’ He ran off into the bush.
    Mrs Farquar lifted the child into the house and bathed his eyes with permanganate. She had scarcely heard Gideon’s words; but when she saw that her remedies had no effect at all, and remembered how she had seen natives with no sight in their eyes, because of the spitting of a snake, she began to look for the return of her cook, remembering what she had heard of the efficacy of native herbs. She stood by the window, holding the terrified, sobbing little boy in her arms, and peered helplessly into the bush. It was not more than a few minutes before she saw Gideon come bounding back, and in his hand he held a plant.
    â€˜Do not be afraid, missus,’ said Gideon, ‘this will cure Little Yellow Head’s eyes.’ He stripped the leaves from the plant, leaving a small white fleshy root. Without even washing it, heput the root in his mouth, chewed it vigorously, then held the spittle there while he took the child forcibly from Mrs Farquar. He gripped Teddy down between his knees, and pressed