"How big is Oahu?" asked Mary Lee.
"It has an area of six hundred square miles, and it is the loveliest of all the islands."
"Dear me, I hadn't an idea it was so big. I thought we should be able to walk all over it during the time we expected to be there."
"Not this trip, my honey, but we can drive about or go on the street-cars around Honolulu."
"Oh, are there street-cars?"
"Certainly there are. Honolulu is quite a big city."
"I always think of it as a wild sort of place with queer little grass huts for the people to live in when they are not disporting themselves in the water and making wreaths of flowers. I expected to see coral reefs and palms and people with feather cloaks on, when they wore anything at all."
Nan laughed. "You might have seen all that if you had lived some eighty or ninety years ago in the days of King Kamehameha."
"Oh, dear, and I suppose there is no more tabu, and we shall not see a single calabash. I don't understand tabu exactly, but I thought I should have an excellent chance to find out."
"No doubt the book tells," said Nan turning over the pages. "It was like this," she said presently after a little reading. "If a chief wanted a field that appealed to his tender sensibilities he set up a pole with a white flag on it and that made the field tabu to any one else. Sometimes if he wanted a lot of fire-wood he would tabu fire and the people had to eat their food raw. All the nicest articles of food were tabu to women who were obliged to eat their meals in a different room and at a different time from the men."