get annoyed with Hine's goat. It had an unpredictable habit of butting people or else trying to put its forefeet on the shoulders of someone it took a fancy to. It also had another objectionable habit of going into the store and putting its forelegs on the counter. Funny once or twice, but annoying, most annoying when the novelty wore off. People started to complain, but Hine just shrugged and looked blank when someone with more courage than those who talked behind her back, told Hine to tie her goat or else she'd lose it one of these days. But time went on and lots of other things happened before Hine tied up her goat. Hine was becoming more witchlike than ever these days—with arms and legs like sticks and her skin going darker and darker with the MATE —and everywhere she went the goat was always butting in—Poor Hine whose mother-love had been aroused and sustained for a few short months then buried forever in the little plot in the cemetery soon after her first marriage to the man who later died from the MATE. For awhile Hine eased her sorrow by regular visits to the graveside, then she stopped going and flung herself into a life of activity. In the summer she played tennis vigorously—almost furiously—in the winter it was basketball and dances and long tours with the team—and her husband, soon he went away to the hospital and sometimes Hine visited him—sometimes, not very often—when there was a paper to sign or something. You see he was getting the Social Security benefit, and as his wife she got it too. But presently Hine got tired of having no husband and went to live with Hoata—a gorilla-like cripple—with kind soft brown eyes like a dog watching its master's face—and in time Hoata watched Hine's face the same way. Perhaps he was grateful to her, grateful for sharing her life with him—the cripple with the gorilla-strong arms and chest, and the feet that only dangled. Grateful to a thin spitfire of a girl dying with the MATE—and how she bullied him and looked after him at the one and same time—And how tongues wagged. ‘That Hine! with a husband lying in the public hospital fifty miles away, living with another man! And collecting the Social Security benefits too.—Did he know? Did the Social Security Department know?’ But Hine just shrugged and looked blank when a meddlesome relative tried to pass on public opinion to the transgressors. Soon though the first husband died and after a brief period (no doubt due to customary observances) Hine married her gorilla-man and continued to collect her Social Security, now as the wife of a cripple. ‘Well, well!’ said some people, particularly the pakehas of the village. ‘You can't beat the Maori for diddling the government.’ But Hine, she didn't care what the pakeha thought or what the Social Security Department thought as long as they continued to pay without too much fuss and silly questions about ‘land and houses and/or occupied’ and how many fowls and pigs and horses they might have. There was Hoata's little lean-to-house which had been altered and improved since Hine had married him, and they had a new electric stove and some new furniture, and of course there were the cats and the dogs and the goat—as for the rest, bah! let them answer their silly questions themselves. That's what they were paid for wasn't it? For a while Hine seemed to fill out and look much better after she settled down with Hoata—she had got new teeth too, and that improved her appearance—then she got the ‘flu or something and had to stay in bed a long time, and the patient Hoata waited on her and attended her every wish. In the summer she seemed to get better, but the District