How Malice Went to Learn a Trade 19

from your back and bring me the gourds so I can dish up
the food so we can eat."
 ."I'm sorry, maman. I'm too tired to do that."
 -"How can you be tired when you have been lying on
your back since daylight, and now the sun is behind mount
La Selle?"
 eShe went after the gourds and dished the food into
them. "Malice, your food is ready. The only thing you have
to do now is come and get it and eat it."
 *Malice still lay on his back with his legs crossed, his
hands under his head, and his hat over his face, and he
said, "Please, maman, bring it to me. The gourd may be
too heavy for me to lift."
 "If it's too heavy, it means there's too much food in it.
I'll take some out so you can lift it."
 -"No, maman," Malice said as he jumped up. "I'll try to
come and get it. Don't take any of it out."
 He walked as slowly as if he were going to a wedding,
as we say, and finally arrived in the kitchen and took his
gourd of dried goat meat stew with potatoes and yams and
congo peas; and then he sat down and began to eat.
 <Mere Malice sat down, too, and began to eat her por-
tion of the stew. After a minute or so she said, "Malice, you
lie on your back so much, I should think you would get a
sore on it. And as lazy as you are, I don't know what you're
going to be when you grow up. You won't work; you won't
go to the chapel to school."
 -"I don't see why I should waste my time going to school.
It's too much trouble for me to open a book and look in it.
The others are so mean that they won't open it and tell me