harvest bugs and barbed wire. One comes home torn and swollen and bleeding. The country is very dangerous everywhere. And London still more so, because of motor traffic."

"What's that?"

"Monstrous machines on wheels, that rush roaring along the streets and knock people down. But, Charles added, "don't let me alarm or depress you about London. You'll like it very much. The great thing is to be inside one of the machines, then you're safe. . . . I shall simply love showing it all to you. I want you to meet all my friends; they mean well, though you'll think them queer, I dare say, at first. Anyhow, they'll adore you."

"Will they? I shall like that, of course."

Thus amicably conversing, they climbed to the top of the hill, and there rested in the shade of a thicket and ate their meal. The lagoon lay below them, a shimmering jewel under the hot noonday, and on the reef half a mile out crawled the little figures of Rosamond and of William. Other little figures fished from boats or rafts in the lagoon, and here and there a boat bobbed on the open sea beyond.

"Always the same old view," said Flora. "But in a short while we shall be sailing away out of sight of it, making for the World. Dear world. . . . I can scarcely believe it, Charles. I am afraid of waking. Such exciting things are dreams, not truth."

"That," said Charles, "is exactly what I am feeling about you, Flora. And I am afraid of waking, too."

...

"Oh, different things. Some are getting palm wine, some oil, some resin. . . . Look out, that nut only just missed you. . . . Palm trees give us (under Providence, as papa says) nearly everything we have-food, drink, light, clothes, soap, thatch, cups to drink from, everything. How one is bored at school, learning the products of the palm tree! You see all those workshops down there; they're making cloth in them and candles, and soap, and twenty other things."

"There must certainly be work for every one here. You can't suffer from unemployment, as we do." "Unemployment? Not working? Do you call that suffering? In any case, the Orphans don't suffer from it; it's a Smith privilege, not working. Though grandmamma and all of them teach us how wrong it is to be idle, and bid us consider the ant, and so on, actually the Smiths have to be rather idle, because none of the work except being in parliament (if that's work) is Smith. Of course, Smiths can't be expected to do Orphan jobs; it would be lowering. . . . Not that I don't work; I am sure I have a dozen things I ought to be doing at home this morning, if I weren't taking you out. All my hats want re-trimming, and I ought to be washing my hair and speaking to my dressmaker. . . . Thank you, Johnson, these will do nicely. We'll put them in my shopping bag, and you can carry it, Charles. We'll climb to the top of the hill, and then we'll sit and eat, and you shall tell me more tales of England. There's a vast deal more I want to hear.... Take care-that's a scorpion by your foot. And that tree stings if you touch it. I am sure walks in England are not quite so painful."

"Oh, yes, worse. We have nettles and brambles and wasps and hornets and snakes and mosquitoes and

harvest bugs and barbed wire. One comes home torn and swollen and bleeding. The country is very dangerous everywhere. And London still more so, because of motor traffic."

"What's that?"

"Monstrous machines on wheels, that rush roaring along the streets and knock people down. But,' Charles added, "don't let me alarm or depress you about London. You'll like it very much. The great thing is to be inside one of the machines, then you're safe. . . . I shall simply love showing it all to you. I want you to meet all my friends; they mean well, though you'll think them queer, I dare say, at first. Anyhow, they'll adore you."

"Will they? I shall like that, of course."

Thus amicably conversing, they climbed to the top of the hill, and there rested in the shade of a thicket and ate their meal. The lagoon lay below them, a shimmering jewel under the hot noonday, and on the reef half a mile out crawled the little figures of Rosamond and of William. Other little figures fished from boats or rafts in the lagoon, and here and there a boat bobbed on the open sea beyond.

"Always the same old view," said Flora. "But in a short while we shall be sailing away out of sight of it, making for the World. Dear world. . . . I can scarcely believe it, Charles. I am afraid of waking. Such exciting things are dreams, not truth."

"That," said Charles, "is exactly what I am feeling about you, Flora. And I am afraid of waking, too."

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. THINKWELL AND THE LOWER ORDERS

I

MR. THINKWELL, after an excellent dinner at the Yams, and an hour's rest after it in his own house (he really felt that he had spent a rather arduous morning), strolled out again with the intention of making the acquaintance of some of the Orphans in their dwellings or at their work. He had declined the company of Mr. Albert Smith on this expedition, for he felt that, unescorted by Smiths, he would be the better able to make friends with such of the lower classes as might come his way.

He walked first to a little colony of small, inferior houses, scarcely more than huts, that stood on the edge of the wood not far from Belle Vue. Outside some of these small dwellings women sat, with infants, sewing, or beating out bark, or stripping the fibrous covering from cocoa-nuts, or otherwise utilising one or another of the products of this useful nut. Most of the women seemed busy in some way. In an enclosed pool at the edge of the lagoon some of them washed clothes.

"Good-afternoon," Mr. Thinkwell said, accosting thus a woman engaged with a cocoa-nut. She looked up respectfully, and returned his greeting.

Mr. Thinkwell then inquired what, at the moment, she did, and she informed him that she was extracting oil for lamps.

"Do you," he asked, "work all day at these nuts?"

She said no, sometimes she made or washed clothes, cleaned her house, and prepared meals for herself and her family.

"It does not sound," said he, "as if you had much leisure in your day."

At this she behaved like Lord Nelson, inquiring what leisure might be, for (said she, in effect), she never saw it.

"I mean," said Mr. Thinkwell, "that you are always busy."

The poor woman agreed that she was, for her part, always one to be that. Some people could be happy idle, others could not, that was how the world was made, and God made us all. Always busy; yes, that was her. And her bits of work helped out her husband's wages; he worked in the woods for Mr. Albert Smith.

"If it isn't impertinent," said Mr. Thinkwell (“and I merely ask because I am collecting facts of all kinds about the life here), how much does your husband earn?"

Her reply was in terms of shells and pieces of coral, and was therefore somewhat obscure to him.

"Is that a good living wage?" he asked her; and she answered that they could just do on it, no more, with what she herself earned.

"I see. A hard life." Mr. Thinkwell pondered. "Are the workers contented," he asked, "with their wages, the distribution of property, their conditions generally?"

The woman said that was what the men talked about when they got together, and they weren't contented at all, but what was the good of fancying things different, when they were as they were, and always had been?