“Lost! No, faith; sure we’re goin’ uphill, an’ all we have to do is to come down again, when we want to get back—ware nuts!” A green nut detached from up above came down rattling and tumbling and hopped on the ground. Paddy picked it up. “It’s a green cucanut,” said he, putting it in his pocket (it was not very much bigger than a Jaffa orange), “and we’ll have it for tay.”
“That’s not a cocoa-nut,” said Dick; “cocoa-nuts are brown. I had five cents once an’ I bought one, and scraped it out and y’et it.”
“When Dr Sims made Dicky sick,” said Emmeline, “he said the wonder t’im was how Dicky held it all.”
“Come on,” said Mr Button, “an’ don’t be talkin’, or it’s the Cluricaunes will be after us.”
“What’s cluricaunes?” demanded Dick.
“Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for the Good People.”
“Who’s they?”
“Whisht, and don’t be talkin’. Mind your head, Em’leen, or the branches’ll be hittin’ you in the face.”
They had left the cocoa-nut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here was a deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great breadfruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful the gloom.
Suddenly Mr Button stopped.