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They were evidently aristocratic Indians, who in the half-native, half-English dress were seated upon excellent horses, a cross-breed between the Arabian and Gujarat. At their head rode a splendidly dressed, dark-bearded man upon a white horse of special beauty. He halted to exchange a few words of civil salutation with the Russian colonel.
There are thirty-seven boarders, native and half-native, and mixed native and Chinese, between the ages of four and eighteen. They provide their own clothes, beds, and bedding, and I think pay forty dollars a year. The capitation grant from Government for two years was 2325 dollars. Sister Phoebe was my cicerone, and I owe her one of the pleasantest days I have spent on the islands.
The setting was different, tropical instead of Northern, and the half-native heroine was more passionate, more emotional, more animal than Joan. Nevertheless, the drama was a repetition. As Prosper had laid his trap for Joan, silently, subtly undermining her whole mental structure, using her loneliness, playing upon the artist soul of her, so did this Englishman lay his trap for Zona.
There were miners in dark clothes and peak caps; citizens in ordinary garb; ranchmen in wide cowboy hats and buckskin shirts and leggings, some with cartridge-belts and pistols; a few half-breeds and Indians in half-native, half-civilised dress; and scattering through the crowd the lumbermen with gay scarlet and blue blanket coats, and some with knitted tuques of the same colours.
His half-Chinese, half-native wife was in a grass hut at the back of the house, and she came immediately to take our horses, saying that her husband was at the church, but would be at home soon. Then opening the door, she told us to go inside and rest ourselves. It was a pretty cottage, with floors and walls of wood and a grass roof.
They had not been there for more than a minute, when a boy, dressed in half-European and half-native costume approached. "Excellency waits for his friend?" he asked in hesitating tones. Helmar eyed the youth up and down. "Well?" he said at last. "I have paper what you call letter!" He handed a dirty envelope to Helmar, and bowing low, waited for the expected douceur.
I had just rounded off my last sentence when he pointed to a house, half-native, half-European, in front of which was a staff bearing the British flag. With the generosity which marks the Englishman away from home I felt in my pockets and found a sixpence. I handed it to my companion; and with a "Talofa" the only Tongan I knew I passed into the garden of the consulate.
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