n smiled to himself when Etheridge asked him to come outside
and smoke when his wife and her sister had said good-night. A student
of human nature, he had long ago read the simple mind of Etheridge as
he would an open book, and knew what was coming. They went outside and
talked--that is, Etheridge did. Lawson listened and smoked. Then he put
a question to the other man.

*****

"Of course I will, Lawson; do you think I'm scoundrel enough to dream
of anything else? We'll go up to Apia and get married by the white
missionary."

Lawson laughed in his quiet way. "I wouldn't think you a scoundrel
at all, Etheridge. I may as well tell you that I'm not married to her
sister. We neglected doing that when I lived in the eastward groups, and
no one in Samoa is any the wiser, and wouldn't think anything of it if
they were. But although I'm only a poor devil of a trader, I'm a man of
principle in some things. Lalia is but a child, so to speak, and I'm her
natural protector. Now, you're a fellow of some means, and if anything
did happen to you she wouldn't get a dollar if she wasn't legally
your wife. The consul would claim everything until he heard from your
relatives. And she's very young, Etheridge, and you've told me often
enough that your heart's pretty dicky. Don't think me a brute."

Etheridge grasped his hand and wrung it. "No, no--a thousand times no.
You're the best-hearted fellow in the world, and I honour you all the
more, Lawson. Will you ask her to-morrow?"

Perhaps if he had heard the manner of Lawson's asking it would have
puzzled his simple brain. And the subdued merriment of the two sisters
might have caused him to wonder still more.

A week or so after, Etheridge and the two sisters went up to Apia.
Lawson was unable to go. Copra was coming in freely, he had said with
a smile, and he was too poor to run away from business--even to the
wedding of his own wife's sister.

*****

As Etheridge and his young wife came out of the mission church some
natives and white loafers stood around and watched them.

"Ho, Magalo," said one, "is not that _teine_, the sister of the wife of
_Mataaitu_ the black-visaged _papalagi?_"

"Aye," answered a skinny old hag, carrying a basket of water-bottles,
"'tis she, and the other is Terere. I lived with them once at Tutuila.
She who is now made a wife and looketh so good and holy went away but
a year ago with the captain of a ship--a pig of a German--and now, look
you, she ma