Amy Marston left her seat, came over to the old man, and kneeling beside him, placed her hands on his.
“Mr. Manning, whenever a ship does come, will you and your sons come away with me to Samoa, and live with me and the kind friends of whom I have told you. Ah, you have been so good to me and my baby that I would feel very unhappy if, when a ship comes and I leave Anouda, you were to stay behind. I am what is considered a fairly rich woman——”
“God bless you, my child—for you are only a child, although you are a widow and have a baby—but you must not tempt me. I shall never leave Anouda. I have lived here for five-and-thirty years, and shall die here. I am now past seventy-six years of age, and every evening when the sun is setting, as it is setting now, I sit in front of my little house and watch it as I smoke my pipe, and feel more and more content and nearer to God. Now, Mrs. Marston, I must be going home. Where is Lilo?''
“Out on the reef somewhere, fishing. Serena and the baby are in the breadfruit grove behind the village. I sent them there, as it is cooler than the house. I shall walk over there for them before it becomes too dark. Ah, here comes the breeze at last.”
“Lilo is a good boy, a good boy,” said the old man as he rose and held out his hand; “he is very proud of calling himself your tausea,{*} and that he 'sailed' the Lupetea so many hundreds of miles.”
* Protector.
“He is indeed a good boy. I do not think we should ever have reached land had it not been for him.”
As the bent figure of the old trader disappeared along the path that led to his own house, which was half a mile away, Mrs. Marston reseated herself, and with her sunbrowned hands folded in her lap, gazed dreamily out upon the glassy ocean, and gave herself up to reverie.
When, in an agony of fear, she had obeyed Villari's request to go below, she had locked herself in her own cabin, and after putting her infant to sleep, had sat up with the girl Serena, waiting for the morning. The pistol which the Italian had given her she laid upon the little table, and Serena, who knew of Villari's infatuation for her mistress, sat beside her with a knife in her hand.