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We will have none of them. Give us our Rakope, our Rakope as she is, glowing with the rich warm colour, the subtle delicacies of form, and all the luxuriant beauty that is born between the South Sea and the sun! And is she not clever? Words fail the schoolmaster when he attempts to sound her praises; for she has learnt nearly all that he can teach her.
Yet have I sworn, as your true knight, O beautiful Rakope! to noise your fame abroad to the four corners of the earth, with the sound of shouting and of trumpets! Prepare, O reader! with due reverence, with proper admiration, to hear of our Maori paragon. For she is a beauty, our Rakope; and more, her intelligence amounts almost to what is genius, by comparison with her companions.
Our hearts sunk into our boots when we saw the prodigious audience that was assembling to hear our crude attempts at minstrelsy. Our Maori friends were there in full force. Rakope, Piha, Mehere, and the rest of the girls, a blooming band of native beauty, escorted by a large contingent of their male relatives.
"Of course not," returned Old Colonial, with a wave of his pipe-hand, as he reclined at Rakope's feet; "of course not. But then, you see," and here he glanced cautiously round to make sure that no Pakehas were within hearing, "she's not worth thinking about, not being rangatira." "Oh!" cried Rakope, with round open eyes; and "Oh!" cried Piha and Mehere, and all the chorus.
"No," continued he, lazily contemplating a smoke-ring in the moonlight; "her father and mother were only kukis, or something not far off it, and she, of course, is not rangatira, not a lady." "Oh!" cried Rakope and the others briskly, and joyously jumping to their feet, "that alters the case.
Something like lèse majesté must be committed either way, that was apparent. To give up the chance of a dance with Miss Cityswell was to forego a rare and exquisite moment of ecstasy; and yet, to qualify ourselves for it, we were required to put an insult upon, and to neglect, our beautiful Rakope and her sisters. Whatever was to be done?
You can see it in her broad, low brow, in her large, clear, liquid eyes, shaded with their black velvety fringe of lashes. Her features may not be good, judged by Greek art standards; but what do we care about art and its standards here in the bush? We can see that Rakope is beautiful, and we know that she is as good as she is beautiful.
Old Colonial and the Saint had taken to making their cattle-hunting expeditions invariably lead them to Tanoa; where they said they went to talk to Mihake about stock, but where, it was remembered, too, pretty Rakope and her sisters dwelt.
She can coax and wheedle her father and Arama, mihonere and kuremata alike, to do almost anything she desires, and through them she may be said to reign over the Ngatewhatua. She is the delight and darling of all the settlers round. She is the idyll of our shanty, and our regard for her approaches to idolatry. O Rakope, Rakope!
They can cipher and sew; have an idea of the rotundity of the earth, with some knowledge of the other countries beyond the sea. They are fully up in all the subjects that are usually taught in Sunday schools. They can play croquet with flirtation accompaniment and wear chignons. Oh no! they are not savages. At least, I should say not. But far pre-eminent among the young ladies of Tanoa is Rakope.
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