"I do not know," he said with infinite gravity. "I will think about it.
Preaching does not seem to do you any good."
Eleanor bent her attention upon her bread and fruit. He spoke next with a change of tone, giving up his gravity.
"Do you know your particular duty to-day?"
"I thought," said Eleanor,—"that as yesterday you shewed me the head-carpenter, perhaps this morning you would let me see the chief cook."
"That is not the first thing. You must have a lesson in Fijian; now that I hope you are instructed in English."
He carried her off to his study to get it. The lesson was a matter of amusement to Mr. Rhys, but Eleanor set herself earnestly to learn. Then he said he supposed she might as well see her establishment at once, and took her out to the side of the house where she had not been.
It was a plantation wilderness here too, though particularly devoted to all that in Fiji could belong to a kitchen garden. English beans and peas had been sown, and were flourishing; most of the luxuriance that met the eye had a foreign character. Beautiful order was noticeable everywhere. Mr. Rhys seemed to have forgotten all about the servants; he pleased himself with leading Eleanor through the walks and shewing her which were the plants of the yam and the kumera and other native fruits and vegetables. Bananas were here too, and the graceful stems of the sugar cane; and overhead the cocoa-nut trees waved their feathery plumes in the air.
"Who did all this?" Eleanor asked admiringly.
"Solomon—with a head gardener over him."
"Solomon is—I saw him yesterday?"