I see by the next entry in my diary that I secured lodgings for Waylao near Victoria Parade, Suva township. It was a snug room situated just over Pink’s general stores. The population round that part was pretty mixed in those days. Not far from Pink’s stores stood White’s hotel. It was there where the swells from the Australian cities stayed when touring with their cameras and notebooks for details of wild life in the Southern Seas.
I introduced myself to old Mrs Pink as a missionary. She was a whiskery-faced old woman, with suspicious, blinking eyes that were weak and appeared to be always shedding tears.
I took her aside and said: “Madam Pink, I’m a missionary, my heart is my profession, and if you are kind to this girl whom I wish to place in your charge till she discovers her friends who live at Vauna Leveu, the members of my denomination will amply reward you, above that which I will pay you.”
I recall how the old woman glanced at Waylao with one eye cocked sideways, and then surveyed me critically. That look said a good deal, and I don’t mind confessing that I felt a strong desire to pull the old girl’s whiskers out by the roots.
Then old Pink, her husband, arrived on the scene. He, too, was a stiff-whiskered-looking old man. His face was very tanned, his beard was scraggy and of reddish hue. Indeed his physiognomy looked like a large, fibrous coco-nut that had twinkling eyes peeping out of its shell.
I sat in their little back parlour, and when I gave them enough money to pay for Waylao’s board and lodging for a week, they almost wept. The old woman went into the next room and sobbed out loud enough for me to hear:
“Them ’ere missionaries are hangels, ’elping the ’elpless—and the fallen.”
I fancied I heard the smothered chuckle as old Pink nudged her in the ribs, as he, too, took the hint from his wily spouse and wailed out: “Gawd’s anointed they is, them who ’elps the ’elpless.”
“I’m getting on in my missionary work, with appreciation like this,” thought I, as I heard those hypocrites fawning over Waylao, calling her endearing names as they took her upstairs.
After I had seen Waylao comfortably settled I went for a stroll. As one may imagine, I was very worried about everything. But I was philosophical in those days, and felt that I could fight the pious world with my sleeves tucked up.