female voice exclaimed loudly, through the palisade, "No such thing. Stuff and nonsense, child. I haven't the least desire to talk to our visitors in this house. Shouldn't get in a word edgeways. All the same, Bertie, it's pretty impudent the way you've carried 'em off."

The visitors saw, between the rails of the fence, a fine figure of a woman clad in rich skins and feathers and hung with ropes of pearls. A monkey-skin bag jingled on her wrist, and a tiny black monkey peered under her arm. The face above this rich attire was large and red and proud. Obviously one of the caste of Smith, and a great lady on the island. She was seated in a kind of hammock, carried by two West African negroes.

Rosamond looked at her, embarrassed, feeling that their host was not being very courteous to this lady relative of his. The lady caught her eye and nodded to her.

"You seem a nice little thing. Ain't she, Sam?" (She addressed a gentleman at her side.) "My good brother Bertie, because he's the eldest son, pretends he's the only Smith on the island. Don't you believe him. You must all come and see me next. I can do you as well as he can, and a trifle better, too. My palm wine is flavoured with turtle. Flora, you must bring them round to me later. I want to hear a world of things from them."

Flora nonchalantly nodded.

Mr. Smith meanwhile ushered the guests into his verandah and bade them be seated. The seats were wooden chairs, made comfortable with cushions of brown cocoa-nut cloth stuffed with feathers. They were set round a table laid with fruits and drinks, the latter being served in cocoa-nut goblets. The two

servant girls, Heavenly-Mind and True-Peace, were still setting out these refreshments, assisted by a small black child.

"That will do, Zachary," said Mrs. Smith to this infant. "You can run away now and help cook."

"A negroid child," commented Mr. Thinkwell. "A descendant, I presume, of the black attendants of your missionary."

"Their youngest child," Mr. Smith replied. "They are prolific, the Zacharies." "That is their name?"

"Yes. They are called Zachary Macaulay. So are all their children. They were understood to say that, where they came from, most of the population bear that name, in memory of some one who was kind to them long ago. My mother says there was a slaveliberator of that name when she was young."

"Interesting," said Mr. Thinkwell.

"But his work was in vain," interpolated Flora, languidly using her fan, "for now these poor Zacharies are slaves again."

"You employ unpaid labour, then?"

"No one pays the Zacharies. They don't expect it," and Mr. Merton said, "Hear, hear," and drained his cocoa-nut.

"The lower orders among ourselves, however," added Mr. Smith, "work for hire."

"The lower orders! You have them, then, even here?"

"I should say so," said Flora.

"Why?" asked Charles, preparing to get sarcastic. "How are they lower? When did they become lower?" Mr. Smith said, "They have always been lower. Ever since our island history began."

"And how," inquired Charles, "did they first show it?"

Mr. Smith combed with his fingers his beautiful whiskers.

"As they show it now, no doubt, by gesture, speech, character, and habits. Naturally there has always been a marked distinction between the descendants of my mother and the descendants of her brood of orphary children."

"Oh, I see. Then the upper classes are all Smiths?" "Naturally, my dear young sir.”

"But the Smiths must have married among the orphans. What was the social position of their issue?"

Issue was another word not taught by Miss Smith. But Mr. Smith, an intelligent man, perceived that it meant children, and replied, "The Smith blood decides the position of any one in whose veins it runs. Naturally no descendant of my mother's-no legitimate descendant, of course"-Mr. Smith interpolated this in a lower tone, glancing at Flora-"could belong to the lower orders."

"And what," asked Charles, "do you give the lower orders for their work?"

"Why, money, to be sure."

"Money?"

"Ay. Our money is in the form of certain shells, and pieces of coral. Yours, I believe, consists of discs of metal."

"But what," asked William, "is the use of money here, "with nothing to buy?"

"Nothing to buy!" Flora smiled derisively.

Mr. Smith said, "Indeed, there is a great deal to buy. You must visit the shopping quarter later. Flora will tell you all about that; she haunts it. And how do you imagine that people obtain their daily

food or clothes without buying them? They do not mostly own the sources of production, as the wealthier classes do. They are not, of course, allowed to rob the fruit trees or steal the game."

"It's as bad as England," William whispered to Rosamond.

"But," said Mr. Smith, "I am doing all the talking. This will never do. We are all eagerness, aren't we, mamma, to hear our visitors' tale of how they first learnt of our existence and decided to discover us."

"Fancy," said Mrs. Smith, who was pressing delicious fruits upon Rosamond.

So Mr. Thinkwell told them the tale of his grandfather the sailor, and of the old letter and chart that had come, after all these years, into his hands.

Mr. Smith nodded at intervals, greatly interested. Flora stared at the narrator with her clear, bright gaze. Meanwhile, Rosamond, eating fruit, stared at Flora, and thought how very handsome she was. Charles thought so too. And Captain Paul and Mr. Merton thought, "If there are many girls as fine as her on the island, I wouldn't mind staying on. .

"Lucky," Flora commented, when Mr. Thinkwell had finished his narration. "Suppose that letter had never reached you. Or suppose you hadn't bothered to start. . . . What luck."

"Hardly luck, Flora," said Mr. Smith. "Rather let us call it Divine Arrangement. We know, don't we, my child, that our lives are hidden in His hand, and that all that happens to us is according to His plan."

"Oh, yes, Flora, you know papa has often told you that," Mrs. Smith absently interjected.

Flora seemed to have the modern habit of not taking a great deal of notice of her papa and mamma. She addressed the Thinkwells.

"What did you expect to find here? Were you amazed when you saw us? I'm sure I should have been prodigiously amazed if I had found an island like ours, full of people so odd as we. For I'm sure we are odd, aren't we?"

She asked this of Charles, who replied that, in his view, all human creatures were very odd indeed.

"Compared with what?" his father asked him, deriding his lack of precision; but Charles, who thought it no moment for philosophical argument, merely said "Turtles; vegetables; anything," and to Flora, "We had no idea how many of you to expect, of course. You have increased at a good rate."

"As a matter of fact," said William, "they haven't increased so much as one would have expected. I calculated, if you remember, that the first orphans would make twenty pairs, and have, on an average,

ten

Mr. Smith cleared his throat, and it occurred to Mr. Thinkwell that perhaps young ladies on the island were still Victorian and not supposed to hear calculations based on birth-rates.

Mrs. Smith hastily led the topic along harmless lines by asking Rosamond, "Do you like children?" a question which always made Rosamond puzzle and frown, for to her it meant neither more nor less than if some one were to ask her if she liked grown persons. Being inarticulate, she could not explain her difficulty except by saying, "Some of them." To which Mrs. Smith returned, "They soon know, don't they?"

They soon know! They said that here, too, then, thought Mr. Thinkwell. Strange, how these remarkable phrases grow up everywhere the same, springing, it seems, out of the fatuity of the human mind. Or had Miss Smith and the Scottish nurse said it before