“No, I certainly shouldn’t go so far as that. Think of how much of a story is crowded into those few words. No waste, nothing thrown away. It’s all epic, or that’s my view, anyhow,” said the governor. “If you look out on those who are singing it, you’d see they are resting from their labours; that they are fighting the ennui which most of us feel when we rest from our labours. Let us look at them.”
The governor stood up and came to the open French windows that faced the fields of sugar-cane. In the near distance were clumps of fruit trees, of hedges of lime and flowering shrubs, rows of orange trees, mangoes, red and purple, forbidden-fruit and grapefruit, the large scarlet fruit of the acqui, the avocado-pear, the feathering bamboo, and the Jack-fruit tree, with its enormous fruit like pumpkins. Parrots were chattering in the acacia and in the Otaheite plum tree, with its bright pink blossoms like tassels, and flanking the negro huts by the river were bowers of grenadilla fruit. Around the negro huts were small individual plantations kept by the slaves, for which they had one day a fortnight, besides Sundays, free to work on their own account. Here and there also were patches of “ground-fruit,” as the underground vegetables were called, while there passed by on their way to the open road leading to Kingston wains loaded with sugar-casks, drawn by oxen, and in two cases by sumpter mules.
“Is there anything finer than that in Virginia?” asked the governor. “I have never been in Virginia, but I take this to be in some ways like that state. Is it?”
“In some ways only. We have not the same profusion of wild fruits and trees, but we have our share—and it is not so hot as here. It is a better country, though.”
“In what way is it better?” the governor asked almost acidly.
“It is better governed.”
“What do you mean by that? Isn’t Jamaica well governed?”
“Not so well that it couldn’t be improved,” was Sheila’s reply.
“What improvements would you suggest?” Lord Mallow asked urbanely, for he was set to play his cards carefully to-day.
“More wisdom in the governor,” was the cheerful and bright reply.