do not wish that. There is no such condition as
idleness in the lives of good men and women.

Nigel has taken to general superintendence of the flourishing community
in the midst of which he has cast his lot. He may be almost regarded as
the prime minister of the islands, in addition to which he has started
an extensive boat-building business and a considerable trade in
cocoa-nuts, etc., with the numerous islands of the Java Sea; also a
saw-mill, and a forge, and a Sunday-school--in which last the pretty,
humble-minded Winnie lends most efficient aid. Indeed it is said that
she is the chief manager as well as the life and soul of that business,
though Nigel gets all the credit.

Captain Roy sometimes sails his son's vessels, and sometimes looks
after the secular education of the Sunday-school children--the said
education being conducted on the principle of unlimited story-telling
with illimitable play of fancy. But his occupations are
irregular--undertaken by fits and starts, and never to be counted on.
His evenings he usually devotes to poetry and pipes--for the captain is
obstinate, and sticks--like most of us--to his failings as well as his
fancies.

There is a certain eccentric individual with an enthusiastic temperament
and blue binoculars who pays frequent and prolonged visits to the
Keeling Islands. It need scarcely be said that his name is Verkimier.
There is no accounting for the tastes of human beings. Notwithstanding
all his escapes and experiences, that indomitable man of science still
ranges, like a mad philosopher, far and wide over the archipelago in
pursuit of "booterflies ant ozer specimens of zee insect vorld." It is
observed, however, even by the most obtuse among his friends, that
whereas in former times the professor's nights were centrifugal they
have now become centripetal--the Keeling Islands being the great centre
towards which he flies. Verkimier is, and probably will always be, a
subject of wonder and of profound speculation to the youthful
inhabitants of the islands. They don't understand him and he does not
understand them. If they were insects he would take deep and
intelligent interest in them. As they are merely human beings, he
regards them with that peculiar kind of interest with which men regard
the unknown and unknowable. He is by no means indifferent to them. He is
too kindly for that. He studies them deeply, though hopelessly, and when
he enters the Sunday-school with his binocul