NANAWA SPEAKS
“Now then, Dick, l’ave her alone and don’t get lookin’ at her,” said Mr. Kearney. “She’s been misbehavin’.”
“What’s she been doin’, Jim?” asked the boy.
“Playin’ with the matches,” replied the other, thinking it just as well not to go into full particulars that were sure to bring a string of Dick’s endless questions.
They were seated at breakfast and Katafa had drawn close for her food. Katafa could be ugly, she could be pretty; never was anything more protean than the looks of this Spanish girl who was yet in all things but birth and blood a Kanaka. This morning, as she sat in the liquid shadow of the trees, she was unpaintably beautiful. She had run away beyond the cape of wild cocoanuts and taken a dip in the lagoon, and now, fresh from sleep and her bath, with a red flower in her hair and her hands folded in her lap, she sat like the incarnation of dawn, her luminous eyes fixed on Kearney.
But Kearney had no eye for her beauty.
“When was she playin’ with them, Jim?” asked the boy, a piece of baked bread-fruit in his fingers.
“Never you mind,” replied the other. “Get on with your breakfast and hand us that plate—I’ll l’arn her.”
He passed a plateful of food to the girl and then helped himself and the meal proceeded, Dick attending to business, but with an occasional side-glance at the criminal.
Playing with the matches was a hideous offence for which he had been whacked twice in earlier days. He reckoned Kearney would whack her, and he looked forward to the business with an interest tinged, but not in the least unsharpened, by his sneaking sympathy with the offence and the offender.