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"You don't want me to go with you?"

"Not unless you wish it."

"Then I shall stay at home. How long shall you be gone?"

"Two weeks, perhaps. Now give me your news. What has happened in Tautira?"

Mauri, the elder woman, seated herself beside the girl, stroking her hand as she listened to the recital, prompting Naia with questions from time to time, allowing her to pass over no slightest detail concerning any event that had been brought to her notice in the distant village. In all of the Taiarapu Peninsula's forty miles of coast line there was no household more isolated than theirs. It was Mauri rather than Naia who missed the small distractions of village life, and twenty years of absence from them had only served to increase her interest in the lives of her distant friends and relatives. Although she was skilled in all the pursuits of a native woman, her life had set her apart, in more than a physical sense, from her own people, who treated her with the deference of acknowledged superiority, and this had been increased by her marriage to a white man, an American named Thayer, who had died some years before. A widow at thirty-four, in sole charge of her own widely scattered family lands, Mauri proved herself thoroughly competent as a business woman. Native managers, connected with her family by blood or marriage, lived on her lands on the island of Hao, in the Low Archipelago, and at Moorea, in the Windward Group. As the years passed her absences from Vaihiva grew less and less frequent, and those who knew her best were both surprised and puzzled at her seeming preference for a life so solitary when a woman of her possessions might have lived where she would. Since her husband's death, the household consisted of herself, Naia, and her father, Raitua; and their only near neighbors were three families who lived far up the valley and performed the work on her plantations.