s Seminary, which was quite fashionable and stifling.
How we used to long for home! We didn't chum with the other girls, who
called us little cannibals, just because we came from the Sandwich
Islands, and who made invidious remarks about our ancestors banqueting on
Captain Cook--which was historically untrue, and, besides, our ancestors
hadn't lived in Hawaii.

"I was three years at Mills Seminary, with trips home, of course, and two
years in New York; and then Dad went smash in a sugar plantation on Maui.
The report of the engineers had not been right. Then Dad had built a
railroad that was called 'Lackland's Folly,'--it will pay ultimately,
though. But it contributed to the smash. The Pelaulau Ditch was the
finishing blow. And nothing would have happened anyway, if it hadn't
been for that big money panic in Wall Street. Dear good Dad! He never
let me know. But I read about the crash in a newspaper, and hurried
home. It was before that, though, that people had been dinging into my
ears that marriage was all any woman could get out of life, and good-bye
to romance. Instead of which, with Dad's failure, I fell right into
romance."

"How long ago was that?" Sheldon asked.

"Last year--the year of the panic."

"Let me see," Sheldon pondered with an air of gravity. "Sixteen plus
five, plus one, equals twenty-two. You were born in 1887?"

"Yes; but it is not nice of you."

"I am really sorry," he said, "but the problem was so obvious."

"Can't you ever say nice things? Or is it the way you English have?"
There was a snap in her gray eyes, and her lips quivered suspiciously for
a moment. "I should recommend, Mr. Sheldon, that you read Gertrude
Atherton's 'American Wives and English Husbands.'"

"Thank you, I have. It's over there." He pointed at the generously
filled bookshelves. "But I am afraid it is rather partisan."

"Anything un-English is bound to be," she retorted. "I never have liked
the English anyway. The last one I knew was an overseer. Dad was
compelled to discharge him."

"One swallow doesn't make a summer."

"But that Englishman made lots of trouble--there! And now please don't
make me any more absurd than I already am."

"I'm trying not to."

"Oh, for that matter--" She tossed her head, opened her mouth to
complete the retort, then changed her mind. "I shall go on with my
history. Dad had practically nothing left, and he decided to return to
the sea. He'd always loved it