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"Well, flower of the English hedgerow, what do you do around here besides eat and sleep?"

"I am married," she answered, with unruffled dullness.

"An' your sisters an' brothers an' uncles an' aunts—where does the family stay?"

The woman uncomfortably recognised his familiarity with island ways; there was rather a lazy swarm dependent on Lily and her husband for provisions from the Combe kitchen.

With dignity she replied: "My husband is a white man, as you are."

Williams reappeared on the veranda and called up some of his sailors. They moved a bed to the veranda and rigged a mosquito netting above it. Paullen, relieved of the sickly rocking of the sea, had already fallen into a sleep, and was placed in the bed without fully awakening.

Williams might have sent a message to the town, some eight miles across the island, for Combe; but he had nothing necessary to say to Combe, and it was important that he go on his way.

All of the parting that he had with McGuire was: "Paullen will be up and about in two or three weeks. Urge him to go home—to his home, wherever it is, for whoever his father is makes no difference. There is no sternness that can resist the return of a boy like that. There is honour in him, and courage. Take care of him, McGuire. You wait here till I come."