servant was smugly pleased, and he was wallowing in mortification. But
he recovered himself quickly.

"It's the Kanaka for 'finish,'" he explained, "and it just come out
naturally. It's spelt p-a-u."

He caught her curious and speculative eyes fixed on his hands, and, being
in explanatory mood, he said:-

"I just come down the Coast on one of the Pacific mail steamers. She was
behind time, an' around the Puget Sound ports we worked like niggers,
storing cargo-mixed freight, if you know what that means. That's how the
skin got knocked off."

"Oh, it wasn't that," she hastened to explain, in turn. "Your hands
seemed too small for your body."

His cheeks were hot. He took it as an exposure of another of his
deficiencies.

"Yes," he said depreciatingly. "They ain't big enough to stand the
strain. I can hit like a mule with my arms and shoulders. They are too
strong, an' when I smash a man on the jaw the hands get smashed, too."

He was not happy at what he had said. He was filled with disgust at
himself. He had loosed the guard upon his tongue and talked about things
that were not nice.

"It was brave of you to help Arthur the way you did--and you a stranger,"
she said tactfully, aware of his discomfiture though not of the reason