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That would be unbecoming to me, even as it would be if thou climbed a tree for a coconut," and the daughter of the Tropics laughed merrily as she patted Challis on his sunburnt cheek. Challis rose, and going to a little table, took from it the ring. "See, Nalia, I am not lazy as thou sayest. This is thine." The girl with an eager "AUE!" took the bauble and placed it on her finger.
He knew well the native customs; but, to torment the boy, he commenced again. "O foolish custom! See how I trust my wife Nalia. Is she not even now in the house of another white man?" "True. But, then, he is old and feeble, and thou young and strong. None but a fool desires to eat a dried flying-fish when a fresh one may be had."
Not so. True it is that to-day all the men are in the bush binding FALA leaves around the coconut trees, else do the rats steal up and eat the buds and clusters of little nuts. And because Nalia, thy wife, is away at the other White Man's house no woman cometh inside the door." Challis laughed. "O evil-minded people of Nukunono! And must I, thy PAPALAGI, be parched with thirst because of this?"
The wind held them in mid-air for a moment, and then carried the little white flecks to the beach. "What is it?" said the bubbling voice of Letia, the Disappointed. "Only a piece of paper that weighed as a piece of iron on my bosom. But it is gone now." May God send me a white man as generous as thee a whole tin of SAMANI for nothing! Now do I know that Nalia will bear thee a son."
I can't be such a fool as to begin to LOVE her in reality, but yet ... Come here, Nalia," and he drew her to him, and, turning her face up so that he might look into her eyes, he asked: "Nalia, hast thou ever told me any lies?" The steady depths of those dark eyes looked back into his, and she answered: "Nay, I fear thee too much to lie. Thou mightst kill me."
Challis, still holding her soft brown chin in his hand, asked her one more question a question that only one of his temperament would have dared to ask a girl of the Tokelaus. "Nalia, dost thou love me?" Am I a fool? Are there not Letia, and Miriami, and Eline, the daughter of old Tiaki, ready to come to this house if I love any but thee? My mother has taught me much wisdom."
Here, take this MASI and go pluck me a young nut to drink," and Challis threw him a ship-biscuit. Then he went on tapping the little band of silver. He had already forgotten the violet eyes, and was thinking with almost childish eagerness of the soft glow in the black orbs of Nalia when she should see his finished handiwork. The boy returned with a young coconut, unhusked. "Behold, Tialli.
His letter to the woman of violet eyes, written a week ago, in the half-formed idea of sending it some day. He read it through, and then paused and looked at Nalia. She raised her head and smiled. Slowly, piece by piece, he tore it into tiny little squares, and, with a dreamy hand-wave, threw them away.
"I do but ask thee some little things. It matters not to me what the answer is. Yet see that thou keepest nothing hidden from me." The girl, with parted lips and one hand on his, waited. "Before thou became my wife, Nalia, hadst thou any lovers?" "Yes, two Kapua and Tafu-le-Afi." "And since?" "May I choke and perish here before thee if I lie! None."
Two girls who came with her carried baskets of cooked food, presents from old Jack Kelly, Challis's fellow-trader. At a sign from Nalia the girls took one of the baskets of food and went away. Then, taking off her wide-brimmed hat of FALA leaf, she sat down beside Challis and pinched his cheek. "O lazy one! To let me walk from the house of Tiaki all alone!" "Alone!
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