Racking my brain for a new start I fell back on those useful fellows, the authors. Presuming that anyone who had lived in that fascinating region—the promised land (if land is the word) of so many of us who are weary of English climatic treacheries—would be familiar with the literature of it. I went boldly to work.
"The first book about the South Seas that I ever read," I said, "was BALLANTYNE'S Coral Island."
"Indeed!" she replied.
I asked her if she too had not been brought up on BALLANTYNE, and she said no. She did not even know his name.
"He wrote for boys," I explained rather lamely.
"I read poetry chiefly as a girl," she said.
"But surely you know STEVENSON'S Island Nights' Entertainment?" I said.
No, she did not. Was it nice?
"It's extraordinary," I said. "It gives you more of the atmosphere of the South Seas than any other work. And Louis BECKE—you must have read him?" I continued.
No, she had not. She read very little. The last book she had read was on spiritualism.