“Monica! Whatever in the world!” her mother said.
“My lei! My lei! I left it on the beach!” Monica wailed.
“Knew you would,” her brother Ted said, in his I-told-you-so voice.
Mr. Mahenili turned to Tom Brewster and smiled. “That’s easily taken care of. We can get them anywhere along here.”
He pulled the car over to the curb in front of a charming hotel constructed of red and white coral. Just to the left of the entrance to the hotel’s palm-studded grounds, sat an old woman surrounded by flowers of every color and species. The woman was seated in a high-backed chair, made of coconut fronds, with her feet in a tub filled with pink, red, and yellow buds. A flame-red hibiscus was stabbed in her topknot. She was a plump Hawaiian woman, dressed in a flowered muumuu the island adaptation of the mother-hubbard dress introduced many years ago by New England missionaries.
The old woman’s brown, deeply lined face cracked into a smile as the Brewsters got out of the car.
Mr. Mahenili spoke to her in the musical words of the native Hawaiian. The old woman’s deft hands grasped a long, slender lei needle, and her hands seemed to fly as she swiftly threaded at least a hundred flowers into a beautiful garland.
“This lei,” Mr. Mahenili explained, “is being made of the plumeria. You see,” he picked up one of the flowers, “it has five petals. Smell it.”
Mrs. Brewster took the flower. “My, that’s lovely! It seems to me I’ve been smelling this lovely scent ever since we’ve been here.”
“You have. This blossom is highly perfumed. It makes our island the sweetest smelling place in the world.”