rd of it!"

"I don't know which is which," confessed the unfortunate Emmeline, who
was an absolute failure at everything practical: who could neither row
nor fish, nor throw a stone, and who, though they had now been on the
island twenty-eight months or so, could not even swim.

"You mean to say," said Dick, "that you don't know where the wind comes
from?"

"Yes, I know that."

"Well, that's to windward."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, you know it now."

"Yes, I know it now."

"Well, then, come to windward of the fire. Why didn't you ask the
meaning of it before?"

"I did," said Emmeline; "I asked Mr Button one day, and he told me a
lot about it. He said if he was to spit to windward and a person was to
stand to loo'ard of him, he'd be a fool; and he said if a ship went too
much to loo'ard she went on the rocks, but I didn't understand what he
meant. Dicky, I wonder where he is?"

"Paddy!" cried Dick, pausing in the act of splitting open a breadfruit.
Echoes came from amidst the cocoa-nut trees, but nothing more.

"Come on," said Dick; "I'm not going to wait for him. He may have gone
to fetch up the night lines"--they sometimes put down night lines in
the lagoon--"and fallen asleep over them."

Now, though Emmeline honoured Mr Button as a minor deity, Dick had no
illusions at all upon the matter. He admired Paddy because he could
knot, and splice, and climb a cocoanut tree, and exercise his sailor
craft in other admirable ways, but he felt the old man's limitations.
They ought to have had potatoes now, but they had eaten both potatoes
and the possibility of potatoes when they consumed the contents of that
half sack. Young as he was, Dick felt the absolute thriftlessness of
this proceeding. Emmeline did not; she never thought of potatoes,
though she could have told you the colour of all the birds on the
island.

Then, again, the house wanted rebuilding, and Mr Button said every day
he would set about seeing after it to-morrow, and on the morrow it
would be to-morrow. The necessities of the life they led were a
stimulus to the daring and active mind of the boy; but he was always
being checked by the go-as-you-please methods of his elder. Dick came
of the people who make sewing machines and typewriters. Mr Button came
of a people notable for ballads, tender hearts, and potheen. That was
the main difference.

"Paddy!" again cried the boy, when he had eaten as much as he wanted.
"Hullo! where are you?"