to be part acting. She said no plain word, but smacked and mumbled
with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas
pudding. She came straight across the house, heading for me, and,
as soon as she was alongside, caught up my hand and purred and
crooned over it like a great cat. From this she slipped into a
kind of song.

"Who the devil's this?" cried I, for the thing startled me.

"It's Fa'avao," says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the
floor into the farthest corner.

"You ain't afraid of her?" I cried.

"Me 'fraid!" cried the captain. "My dear friend, I defy her! I
don't let her put her foot in here, only I suppose 's different to-
day, for the marriage. 's Uma's mother."

"Well, suppose it is; what's she carrying on about?" I asked, more
irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the
captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise
because I was to marry Uma. "All right, old lady," says I, with
rather a failure of a laugh, "anything to oblige. But when you're
done with my hand, you might let me know."

She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and
stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she
came in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I
followed her to the door she had already vanished.