Passfield came over to check up on a couple of cases he had recently released. She went with him to the workers’ huts and found her mind so occupied with what she met there that it had no time to get busy on anything else. By lunch-time, she had come to the conclusion that the life of a plantation worker on Motu was the ideal. They had small thatched houses of two rooms which needed very little attention. Their bathroom and laundry was the river and the river bank was their club. Their gardens and orchards were the natural growth around them; they kept chickens and pigs and except for sugar, flour and salt, they needn’t spend a penny on food.The women wore sarongs and blouses, and coiled their thick hair in the nape. They weren’t good-looking, and through inter-marriage they were very much alike, but they apparently had a strong sense of humour which was often expressed at the expense of their menfolk. Not many of the men were about that morning; they were working among the palms.
