evening, ten to one he would hear it still going on in the
verandah. I just nodded to him; he would sit down heavily and
gently, and watch with a sort of approving anxiety my efforts to
make his daughter smile.

I called her often "Alice," right before him; sometimes I would
address her as Miss "Don't Care," and I exhausted myself in
nonsensical chatter without succeeding once in taking her out of
her peevish and tragic self. There were moments when I felt I must
break out and start swearing at her till all was blue. And I
fancied that had I done so Jacobus would not have moved a muscle.
A sort of shady, intimate understanding seemed to have been
established between us.

I must say the girl treated her father exactly in the same way she
treated me.

And how could it have been otherwise? She treated me as she
treated her father. She had never seen a visitor. She did not
know how men behaved. I belonged to the low lot with whom her
father did business at the port. I was of no account. So was her
father. The only decent people in the world were the people of the
island, who would have nothing to do with him because of something
wicked he had done. This was apparently the explanation Miss
Jacobus had given her of the household's isolated position. For
she had to be told something! And I feel convinced that this
version had been assented to by Jacobus. I must say the old woman
was putting it forward with considerable gusto. It was on her lips
the universal explanation, the universal allusion, the universal
taunt.