stockings, but soon slipping them off as the crowd grew and their feet
became weary. Lovaina herself moved happily about the salle-à-manger
telling her friends that she was a grandmother. A letter had given the
information that her daughter had a child. She was a doting parent, and
we all must toast the newborn. Two grave professors of the University
of California, ichthyologists or entomologists, sat entranced at the
unconventionality of the scene, drinking vin ordinaire and gazing
at the Tahitian girls, or eating breadfruit, raw fish, and taro,
as if they were on Mars and did not know how they got there.

I saw an entry in Lovaina's day-book on the table:

"Germani to Fany 3 feathers."

This was a charge made by Atupu against a Dane for three cocktails. He
took his meals at Mme. Klopfer's restaurant. Her first name is
Fanny, and Atupu thinks all men not English, French, or Americans,
are Germans; so she identified the Dane as the German who went to
Fanny's for his meals.

Lovaina said to me:

"I hear you look one house that maybe you rent. You don't get wise
if you rent from that French woman. I don't say nothing about her,
but you know her tongue? So sharp jus' like knife. All time she have
trouble. Can't rent her house so sharp. Some artist he rent; she take
box, peep over see what he do jus' because he have some girl. Nobody
talk her down. No, I take back. Jus' one French woman who know to
swear turribil. This swear woman she call her turribil name and say,
'Everybody don't know you was convict in Noumea for killing one man