face,--"to have Ra Mbombo's beard sweep my plate when I am at dinner."

"What does he do that for?"

"He is so fond of me."

"That is being too fond, certainly."

"It is an excess of affectionate attention,--he gets so close to me
that we have a community of things. And you will have, Eleanor, some
days, a perpetual levee of visitors. But what is all that, for Christ?"

"I am not afraid," said Eleanor with a most unruffled smile.

"I wrote to frighten you."

"But I was not frightened. Are things no better in the islands than
when you wrote?"

"Changing--changing every day; from darkness to light, and from the
power of Satan to God. Literally. There are heathen temples here, in
which a few years ago if a woman or a child had dared cross the
threshold they would have been done to death immediately. Now those
very temples are used as our schools. On our way to the chapel we shall
pass almost over a place where there used to be one of the ovens for
cooking human bodies; now the grass and wild tomatoes are growing over
it. I can take you to house after house, where men and women used to be
eaten, where now if you stand to listen you may hear hymns of praise to
Jesus and prayer going up in his name. Praise the Lord! It is grand to
be permitted to live in Fiji now!"--

Eleanor was hushed and silent a few minutes, while Mr. Rhys walked
slowly up and down. Then she spoke with her eyes full of sympathetic
tears.

"Mr. Rhys, what can I do?"

"What you have to do at present," he said with a change of tone, "is to
take care of me and learn the language,--both languages, I should say!
And in the mean while you had better take care of your pins,"--he
stooped as he spoke, to pick up one at her feet and presented it with
comical gravity. "You must remember you are not in England. Here you
could not spend pin-money even if you had it."

"If I were inclined to be extravagant," said Eleanor laughing at him,
"your admonition would be thrown away; I have brought such quantities
with me."

"Of pins?"

"Yes."

"I hope you will not ever use them!"

"Why not?"

"I do not see what a properly made dress has to do with pins."

But at this confession of masculine ignorance Eleanor first looked and
then laughed and covered her face, till he came and sat down again and
by forcible possession took her hands away.

"You have no particular present occasion to laugh at me," he said.
"Eleanor, what made you first willing to quit