return continually to the case of the rejected pig. 'I like give
present all 'e same you,' he complained; 'only got pig: you no
take him!' He was a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he had
only a pig, he repeated; and I had refused it. I have rarely been
more wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, so
poor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance, and to
appreciate, with growing keenness, the affront which I had so
innocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speech
is vain.

Tari's son was smiling and inert; his daughter-in-law, a girl of
sixteen, pretty, gentle, and grave, more intelligent than most
Anaho women, and with a fair share of French; his grandchild, a
mite of a creature at the breast. I went up the den one day when
Tari was from home, and found the son making a cotton sack, and
madame suckling mademoiselle. When I had sat down with them on the
floor, the girl began to question me about England; which I tried
to describe, piling the pan and the cocoa shells one upon another
to represent the houses, and explaining, as best I was able, and by
word and gesture, the over-population, the hunger, and the
perpetual toil. 'Pas de cocotiers? pas do popoi?' she asked. I
told her it was too cold, and went through an elaborate
performance, shutting out draughts, and crouching over an imaginary
fire, to make sure she understood. But she understood right well;
remarked it must be bad for the health, and sat a while gravely
reflecting on that picture of unwonted sorrows. I am sure it
roused her pity, for it struck in her another thought always
uppermost in the Marquesan bosom; and she began with a smiling
sadness, and looking on me out of melancholy eyes, to lament the
decease of her own people. 'Ici pas de Kanaques,' said she; and