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Prompted (I have since supposed) by the devil, I called the little man to where I stood and asked him peremptorily to name his lowest price for Bo. He replied in a brisk, businesslike manner that he couldn’t dream of letting her go for less than a hundred dollars.

“A hundred fiddlesticks!” I exclaimed. “Rather than see her abandoned here to starve, I will take her for my servant and pay her ten dollars a month.”

“Oh, she don’t need no money,” he said. “Just you hug and kiss her a bit, and keep her going with beads and such-like, and she’ll work her hands off to serve you. It’s a mug’s game to give a Kanaka money. W’y, they ain’t no more fit for money than that monkey to navigate a ship.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “I have told you before that I did not come up here to start a native establishment—least of all with a woman who looks like Bo. But I’m ready to take her off your hands and pay her good wages, and I don’t think you can be so contemptible as to stand in her light.”

“Oh, I shan’t stand in her blooming light,” he said. “I’d sleep easier to think I had left her in a comfortable home with a perfeck gentleman such as you to tyke care of her. My word, I would, and the thought of it will be a comfort to me in the privations of my humble lot; and I trust you will believe me that it was in no over-reaching spirit that I ventured to nyme my figger for the girl. But I put it to you, as between man and man, won’t you spare me a few dollars as a sort of token of your good will?”