But in the early days, because work was the portion of the slave, the lady must needs sit with idle hands. The long hot hours were interminable. She lounged about in a loose white garment, bareheaded, barefooted, she did absolutely nothing from morning to night. The slaves brought in food, highly-spiced food, to tempt a languid appetite, and she ate it on the floor, because so it was considered more appetising; if she felt amiable she asked the slaves to share, if not, a blow or many stripes was their portion. Only when there was a chance of meeting a young man, or at least an unmarried man, did she give time and attention to her toilet and lay herself out to please. By reason of her training or lack of it, she had nothing in common with that man but thoughts of passion or pleasure. Of pleasure she might speak, though pleasure taken without work behind it, shared or understood, is very unmeaning; of passion she was supposed to know not even the meaning of the word. She must, so she thought, appear utterly ignorant on most subjects. Many and many a time a girl put on her fine clothes, tried first this colour and then that, curled her hair and powdered her face, put a touch of rouge here and a patch there, pinned down a ribbon or fluffed out a bow and went out with a sigh and a smile and ogled and coquetted as might any more fortunate dame at Bath or Tunbridge Wells. And she hoped--for what? That perhaps at last she might find favour in some young buck's eyes, and so be able to talk to her sisters and her friends, and above all to her brothers, as if it were she who were conferring the favour and this young man had fallen a victim to her charms. When he came awooing in earnest he likely had, for the odds were heavy against her. Marriage was out of fashion. The young planter did not wish to marry. It was an age of so-called gallantry--of intrigue, and once the negro slaves were introduced, he formed connections with his own women slaves that gave him entire satisfaction. How often I wonder did the girl take off the gown put on with such high hopes with a bitter sense of failure, a failure that might not ever be put into words, and all the bitterer for that. And the oftener she did it, and the fainter her hopes, the more dreary would be her feelings. Her own helplessness, her own uselessness, though she would not put it that way, made her hard on the luckless girl who waited on her, made her curtail her scanty liberty, beat her, or starve her ruthlessly. But there were not always white women in a planter's household. Even now in Jamaica there is a proverb that says rudely that the two worst things on a pen are a goat and a white woman--that is what made these girls' chances so poor.