for one of those blue water-lilies.

(_Jefferson, getting rather sick of it, pretends he does not hear._)

THE DOCTOR (_speaking in loud tones which Jefferson cannot ignore_):
Pick that, please, and that, and those things half-way up that tree.

(_Jefferson begins to grow very hot and uneasy. He peeps about
nervously, probably with a view to dodging his old friend, the head
gardener._)

THE CHRONICLER (_feeling that his party is disgracing itself, and
desiring to reprove them in a parable_): I say, Jefferson, could you cut
down that palm--the biggest of those two--and have it sent along to the
ship? If the head gardener is here, he might help you.

JEFFERSON (_losing his temper, missing the parable, and turning upon the
Chronicler_): No, sar! You no hab no more. I'se dam near pulled off
ebb'ryting in de 'tanical Garns, an' I'se goin' right away now 'fore
anyfing's said!

(_Exit Jefferson rapidly, trying to conceal a mass of foliage under his
ragged coat. The party follows him in single file._)

[_Curtain._]

[Illustration: "'I'SE PULLED OFF EBB'RYTING IN THE 'TANICAL GARNS.'"]

I doubt not that, had we met the head gardener just then, our guide
would have lost a friend.

Henceforth, evidently feeling we were not wholly responsible in this
foreign atmosphere of wonders, Jefferson stuck to the streets, and took
us to churches and shops and other places where we had to control
ourselves and leave things alone.

On the way to a photographer's he cooled down and became instructive
again. He told us the name and address and bad actions of every white
person we met. Society at St. Kitts, from his point of view, appeared to
be in an utterly rotten condition. The most reputable clique was his
own. We met several of his personal friends. They were generally brown
or yellow, and he assured us that he had white blood in him too--a fact
we could not possibly have guessed. Presently he grew confidential, and
told us that his eldest son was a source of great discomfort to him. At
the age of fifteen Jefferson Junior had run away from home and left St.
Kitts to better himself at Barbados. Five years afterwards, however,
when he had almost passed out of his parents' memory, so Jefferson
declared, the young man returned, sick and penniless, to the home of his
birth. I said here:

"This is the Prodigal Son story over again, Jefferson. Did you kill the
fatted calf, I wonder, and make much of the lad?