7th. - To-Day I Called At The Queen's, But Had To Wait Five Hours
In Company With Some Attendants, To Whom She Sent Pombe
Occasionally; But After Waiting For Her Nearly All Day, They Were
Dismissed, Because Excess Of Business Prevented Her Seeing Them,
Though I Was Desired To Remain.
I asked these attendants to sell
me food for beads, but they declared they could not without
obtaining permission.
In the evening the queen stumped out of
her chambers and walked to the other end of her palace, where the
head or queen of the Wichwezi women lived, to whom everybody paid
the profoundest respect. On the way I joined her, she saying, in
a state of high anger, "You won't call on me, now I have given
you such a charming damsel: you have quite forgotten us in your
love of home." Of course Meri's misdemeanour had to be explained,
when she said, "As that is the case, I will give you another; but
you must take Meri out of the country, else she will bring
trouble on us; for, you know, I never gave girls who lived in the
palace to any one in my life before, because they would tell
domestic affairs not proper for common people to know." I then
said my reason for not seeing her before was, that the four times
I had sent messengers to make an appointment for the following
day, they had been repulsed from her doors. This she would not
believe, but called me a story-teller in very coarse language,
until the men who had been sent were pointed out to her, and they
corroborated me.
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