eaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own
tongue, "Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds! You are
good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We are glad you have
come to us."

A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected
alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian
taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor
dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed
down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two
attendants, and reached the _marae_--the open forum or place of public
assembly--which stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by
bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting
in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in the regular
old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and
remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships,
retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The sight
was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed,
soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground,
laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists
were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracaena leaves, their swelling
bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.
Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their
long, black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet
flowers. The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or
lounged on the buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the
women in narrow waist-belts of the long red dracaena leaves, with necklets
of sharks' teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior's cap on
their well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below
the shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking
and beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense
of fear, stood still to look at it.

The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of
them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of
mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of
the _marae_. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned. "What is
it, Mali?" Muriel whispered, her woman's instinct leading her at once t