Mrs. Ulswater took up her knitting and said, “I should like to see the older king first.”
“If you'll come up to the palace to-morrow,” said Sadler, “the old man'd be pleased to see you. You've no notion how he'd like Kolo to have a foreign education.”
He gathered up his large frame, murmured, “Piratical waxworks!” and departed, together with Irish, who silently smoked his short black pipe.
CHAPTER XVI—AT THE PALACE
IT seemed to me that a Prime Minister who composed poetry impromptu and played the banjo, was a species never yet examined and classified by me. But as to Kolosama's entry into my family circle, it seemed to me the selection of orphans should be made only on strong recommendations.
The next morning Mrs. Ulswater, Susannah, and I started. A well-trodden path led through the forest, and at the end of a few miles came out into a pleasant valley, where lay a scattered village of huts for the most part small, fragile, and consisting generally of a woven roof, posts to support it, and an occasional mat between posts. The palace was easily distinguished, standing in a grove on a hill, a long one-storied bamboo house, surrounded by piazzas. Evidently it had been built by a white man. In some odd way it suggested the States.
Sadler met us in the village, and brought us to his own dwelling, which stood at the foot of the palace hill. I judged it had been furnished from the palace with properties of King Craney. It included five bamboo huts adjoining each other.
A Kanaka servant, who stood by the door of one of them, shrieked and vanished. That hut seemed to be the kitchen. A cat of faded and depressed appearance replaced the Kanaka in the doorway.