herself on
relief from the necessity of filling my place and discharging my
responsible duties.

My husband, with the rest of the company, had looked up at the awkward
incident, and I thought I saw by his curious grimace that he supposed my
father (of whom he was always in fear) had told me to assert myself. But
Alma, with surer instinct, was clearly thinking of Martin, and almost
immediately she began to speak of him.

"So your great friend has just gone, dearest. The servants are crazy
about him. We've missed him again, you see. Too bad! I hope you gave him
our regrets and excuses--did you?"

The evil one must have taken hold of me by this time, for I said:

"I certainly did not, Alma."

"Why not, my love?"

"Because we have a saying in our island that it's only the ass that eats
the cushag"--a bitter weed that grows in barren places.

Alma joined in the general laughter which followed this rather
intemperate reply, and then led off the conversation On the incidents of
the cruise.

I gathered that, encouraged by her success in capturing the Bishop by
her entertainment, she had set herself to capture the "aristocracy" of
our island by inviting them to a dance on the yacht, while it lay at
anchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the moment was to play battledore
and shuttlecock with the grotesque efforts of our great people (the same
that had figured at my wedding) to grovel before my husband and his
guests.

"I say, Jimmy," cried Mr. Vivian in his shrill treble, "do you remember
the old gal in the gauze who--etc . . . ?"

"But do you remember," cried Mr. Eastcliff, "the High Bailiff or Bum
Bailiff with the bottle-nose who--etc . . . ?"

"Killing, wasn't it, Vivian?" said one of the ladies.

"Perfectly killing," said everybody.

This shocking exhibition of bad manners had not gone on very long before
I became aware that it was being improvised for my benefit.

After Alma had admitted that the Bishop was a "great flirt" of hers, and
Mr. Vivian, amid shouts of laughter, had christened him her "crush," she
turned to me and said, with her smiling face slightly drawn down on one
side:

"Mary, my love, you will certainly agree that your islanders who do not
eat cushags, poor dears, are the funniest people alive as guests."

"Not funnier," I answered, "than the people who laugh at them as hosts."

It was not easy to laugh at that, so to cover Alma's confusion the men
turned the talk to their usual topic, h