Part 15 (1/2)

”I read poetry chiefly as a girl,” she said

”But surely you know Stevenson's 'Island Nights' Entertainments'?” 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

”Not even Conrad?” I pursued ”No one has so described the calms and storms of the Pacific”

No, she remembered no story called Conrad

I was about to explain that Conrad was the writer, not the written; but it seemed a waste of words, and we fell into a stillness broken only by the sound of knife and fork

”I wonder,” I ventured next, ”if you cauin”

”Go--what?” she asked

”That a Peruvian-Frenchuin He Lived in Tahiti”

”How coain a silence brooded over our plates

”Hang it! you shall talk,” I said to ed to knohat copra is; how it grohat it looks like, what it is for”

”You have co person,” she replied, with very wide eyes

”I never heard of it Or did you say 'cobra'? Of course I knohat a cobra is--it's a snake I've seen theht ”Copra, the stuff that the traders in the South Seas deal in”

”I never heard of it,” she said, ”but then why should I? I know nothing about the South Seas”

My stock fell thirty points and I cru sensible to say; but at this moment ”half-time” mercifully set in My partner on the other side turned to ht the verses in ”Abraham Lincoln” were a beauty or a blemish; and with the assistance of the Russian ballet, some new novels, and the universal unrest I sailed serenely into port She was as easy and agreeable a woman as that other was difficult, and before she left for the drawing-room she had invited ht to my hostess I asked why she had told me that my first partner had been in the South Seas She said that she had said nothing of the sort; what she had said was that during the War she had been stationed with her husband, Colonel Blank, at Southsea

ON FINDING THINGS

After the passage of several years since I had picked up anything, last week I found successively a carriage key (in Royal Hospital Road), a brooch (in Church Street, Kensington), and sixpence in a third-class compartment It was as I stooped to pick up the sixpence, which had suddenly gleae, that I said to s is one of the purest of earthly joys

And how rare!

I have, in a lifetith, found als this week; a brown-paper packet when I was about seven, containing eight pennies and one halfpenny; on the grass in the New Forest, when I was about twenty, a half-dollar piece; and at Brighton, not long after, a gold brooch of just sufficient value to make it decent to take it to the police station, fro claimed it, it was returned to ht add--now and then, perhaps, a safety-pin, pencil, some other trifle, which, however well supplied with such articles one may be, cannot be acquired from a clear sky without a thrill Even Mr Rockefeller, I take it, would not have been unmoved had he, instead of myself, stumbled on that treasure between Stony Cross and Boldrewood