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And the woman she scours and the woman she spits and the woman she blows and the woman she buffs and the woman she rubs and the woman she scrubs, and the child doesn’t turn white, but she does come out clean and she’s turned out brown.

What’s your name? Is your tongue gone, then, little ash-potato, asks the woman, open your mouth.

But the child wouldn’t talk and the child wouldn’t eat and child she stayed as shut as a stone.

And the woman she pinches and the woman she slaps and the woman she threatens and the woman she pleads and the woman she swears and the woman she screams and jumps up and down and later she’s worn out with struggling and she locks up the child in the back room of the house and she sits down in a little heap with her head on her knees and she weeps.

Dumbstupid woman! the farmer scolded. Look, now you’re even unhappier than you were before. It’s a bad child you’ve brought into our house, it’s a dung beetle.

And the woman said: Just you wait, you’ll see, I know she’s good, she’ll bring us lots of happiness yet.

And the woman made a slot in the door and she whistled through it at the child, and all day she sang and she played the piano and she rang the bells and she struck on sticks and she made her dresses and shadow-animals and verses and the sweetest foods. But the child stayed small and hard and stiff and she said not a word and she slid away under her bed and she rolled herself into a ball in the corner of her room.

And then one day the woman had a bright idea and she said:

I found you in the cold pitch-black fireplace. Perhaps what you need is a real live fire!

And when the woman said ‘fire’ then the child’s eyes shone like two morning stars, and she leapt up there, can you believe it, and she became as lively as an ant and she searched for dry grasses and a ball of paper and she gathered the twigs and the sticks and she carried three pine cones and five old mealie cobs and piled everything in a heap and the woman dragged up three big logs and she took an ember from the stove and she placed it under the heap and she said to the child:

Now blow, my child, for all you’re worth, and do get some life!

And the child she bulged her cheeks and she blew and she blew with all her might, and before long a little spiral of smoke arose and a little flame leapt up and the heap caught fire. And it crackled and sputtered and the sparks they flew and the fire it flared up and the flames they beckoned with hot red hands and they said:

Come, little child, come! And dance and sing because we are the place you come from! You come from the hearth, you come from the wind, from the glow of the wood, from the soot-black chimney that sucks up sparks and that speckles the lily with ash, you come from the smoke that turns the sun red as copper and the moon as yellow as gold.

And from that day the little girl was good and sweet and a child like every other child and she was baptised with the name Good.

And the woman taught her to bake and cook and wash and iron and sweep and polish and knit and sew with needle and thread. And she taught her to read and to write. And she tied a ribbon in her hair and showed her a mirror and she said:

See, now you are a human being.

And she took her to the forest and the sea and the fields. And she taught Good the names of the plants and the fishes and the animals and the bugs and the flowers, the months and the days and the time for sowing and the time for reaping and the lambing-time and the shearing-time and the psalms and the hymns of thankfulness. And Good wore a red dress and learnt hard and was in everything she did as good as her name. And Good wore a green dress and she grew up and got strong and had good manners and said her prayers and ate at table with the farmer and his wife and slept in her room at the end of the passage. And every evening the woman told her the story of how she had rescued her from the pitch-black hearth and made of her a child in the house and a human being in the mirror. And the woman’s breath