The sellers had sprung instantly into kneeling postures, all as if pulled by a single wire. Brown arms went forth, like those of crabs, flower hung. "Lei, lei, Honolulu lei! Prettie flower! Prettie ladees! Dollar—Fufty cents! Here, ladee, prettie lei, twunty-fi' cents!"
"Offer a quarter for three, and see them hustle," said Dodge.
"Oh, what visions of beauty!" breathed Gwendolen, and flung down silver coin at random. "See, ropes of carnations! Pink oleanders threaded into regular cables! And oh, the lovely yellow things,—my color,—golden acacias, I believe. I shall loop myself like an East Indian idol in these fragrant necklaces. And what are those purple things, and those? Why, why, I don't know the others at all. I thought I was friends with every flower. They smell like heaven!"
"Frangipani, ylang-ylang, stephanotis, plumaria, acacia," rattled Dodge, in the tone and manner of a professional guide.
"What a delightful courier you would make, Mr. Dodge!" cried saucy Gwendolen. "I think I'll bespeak your services, now, for my wedding journey."
"I'm jolly well apt to be along on that particular trip, you know," retorted the young man, with such cool assurance that all laughed—except Mrs. Todd. That good lady had begun to view, with some apprehension, the over-confident tactics of the attaché. Gwendolen, after an unsuccessful attempt to stare him "down," bent flushed cheeks and laughing eyes to the flowers. "We must all wear lei, of course," she cried, a trifle unsteadily. "It's positively the only thing to do on such a day! Yuki, pink carnations will be ravishing on your little white sailor-hat, and also, by a happy coincidence, on Pierre's new Panama. Dad, you and mother must have this divine stephanotis, mixed with a little smilax, for a green old age. Just think of buying strung stephanotis by the yard! And, Mr. Dodge,—last and not least, Mr. T. Caraway Dodge!—" Mockingly she caught up a string of magenta-colored "bachelor buttons," and would have offered them with a curtsey; but already Dodge had carefully wound his helmet in coils of acacia flowers until it had become, in shape and size, an old-fashioned beehive made of gold.
This time she presented her back squarely. The others withheld laughter until they should have read the expression on the chaperon's face. But she, oblivious apparently of this new bit of daring, had lorgnettes at her eyes, and was studying carefully a closely written list,—a composite of suggestions, made up for her by admiring ship friends. "Punch Bowl Crater, The Bishop Museum, Banana Plantations, Waki-ki Beach,—note colors on the shoals,—House where R. L. Stevenson resided," she was murmuring, as though to fix each in her memory. Suddenly she looked up. "Cyrus, the carriages! I doubt whether we can get them all in, but I intend to do my best."
"Mother!" began Gwendolen, in a note of protest. Yuki was smiling, and Pierre also. As long as they were together, nothing else mattered. The countenance of Dodge, however, had an acrobatic fall from elation to horrified disappointment. At sight of this, Gwendolen actually glittered mischief.
"Certainly, mother dear," she hastened to answer. "Let us take everything in,—even a little more, if possible. We all need our minds improved,—and some of us our manners!" Dodge, darting a look into her face, found only trustful innocence. The carriages had arrived. With great ostentation he assisted Mrs. Todd into her place. "I think I shall be able to supply one or two interesting spots not down on that list," he suggested, with a tentative look at the empty cushion beside her. "Claus Spreckels' house, the Infirmary, the Honolulu University with miles of hedges made up of volcanic stone overgrown with night-blooming cereus—you mustn't miss that!" Dodge's eyes and his smile were frankness embalmed and irradiated. Mrs. Todd perforce smiled in reply. "Jump in," she said cordially. "You're quite a treasure in travelling, Mr. Dodge."
Gwendolen meekly took a rear seat by her father. As she pressed lovingly against him, sending upward the tiniest little teased smile of discomfiture, his face broke into merry wrinkles. "I think you've found your match this time, little girl," he whispered.