“Present!”
“Zillah?”
“Present!”
“Stephen?”
“Present!”
Very good. There they were.
But alas! it was a run-down, abandoned asylum. Mr. Tupper, that talented descriptive author, had died some six months before, of the fever that seemed to be resident, or sporadic, in the island.
I discovered, at Port Clementina, a sort of governor or prefect, who seemed to be officially resident, and by nature sporadic, incidental. He was the calmest official in the Indian Ocean. There were vast vacant spaces in his mind. He did not know there were any orphans now at the asylum. He had understood there wasn't any asylum left. In any case, why not? In every conceivable case, why not? He had supposed they had all grown up, or disappeared, or fallen off something, or died of the fever, or snakes, or been adopted by natives, or something. Why not? In point of fact, now he came to think of it, he had not supposed anything about it whatever. Were they indeed still running around up there? Name of God! How amusing!
Mrs. Ulswater was indignant.
The population of Clementina is of extremely mixed blood. That Susannah was of Caucasian extraction—age fifteen or so; that Thaddeus also was of some northern ancestry, by his light hair, high cheek-bones, and slightly piggy eyes; that James was a diminutive Malayan—as I judged—age perhaps eight; and the rest miscellaneous African, Arab, French, and what not—all this argues a curious history for the island; which history I had no time to investigate, on account of Mrs. Ulswater's indignation.