[…] responded with temper and irritability toward her step-daughter, Anna, who was so demure and so complete a member of the new society, and toward Ngaoli, her co-mother-in-law, gaunt, old, married under the old system, a devoted church member, righteous mother of five children, who fortunately had no complications in her life.

Here the stripped panelling was warmly gold and the pictures, mostly of the English school, were mellow and gentle in the afternoon light.

a lion dormant

Holonym: limb