ed this walk, because we went right into the houses and
talked to the people, and bought cocoa-nuts off the trees, and ate the
inside custard with a spoon, and made the little codgers race for
pennies, and tried all the different kinds of fruits. She said she would
like to walk out with us always, but her mother said she must not be
going about too much with boys.

"But there are no girls on the island," said she; "at least, no white
ones,--as far as I have seen."

I suppose there were white children around, but they escaped notice in
the vast majority of little nigs.

The day after this walk, the shorter "yellow-legs" asked me to go out
fishing with him. He couldn't find anybody else, I suppose, for his
friend didn't like fishing. Neither did Rectus; and so we went off
together in a fishing-smack, with a fisherman to sail the boat and
hammer conch for bait. We went outside of Hog Island,--which lies off
Nassau, very much as Anastasia Island lies off St. Augustine, only it
isn't a quarter as big,--and fished in the open sea. We caught a lot of
curious fish, and the yellow-legs, whose name was Burgan, turned out to
be a very good sort of a fellow. I shouldn't have supposed this of a man
who had made such a guy of himself; but there are a great many different
kinds of outsides to people.

When we got back to the hotel, along came Rectus and Corny. They had
been out walking together, and looked hot.

"Oh," cried Corny, as soon as she saw me. "We have something to talk to
you about! Let's go and sit down. I wish there was some kind of an
umbrella or straw hat that people could wear under their chins to keep
the glare of these white roads out of their eyes. Let's go up into the
silk-cotton tree."

I proposed that I should go to my room and clean up a little first, but
Corny couldn't wait. As her father had said, she wasn't good at waiting;
and so we all went up into the silk-cotton tree. This was an enormous
tree, with roots like the partitions between horse-stalls; it stood at
the bottom of the hotel grounds, and had a large platform built up among
the branches, with a flight of steps leading to it. There were seats up
here, and room enough for a dozen people.

"Well," said I, when we were seated, "what have you to tell? Anything
wonderful? If it isn't, you'd better let me tell you about my fish."

"Fish!" exclaimed Rectus, not very respectfully.

"Fish, indeed!" said Corny. "_We_ have seen a _queen_!"

"Queen o