Tumau
(his real mother) will be lonely at first. So you can sleep at the
village and come and see me during the day."

His eyes lit up with that and the first smile of the day overspread his
face, showing the whitest teeth imaginable.

It was not long before he was perfectly at home in Vailima. He would
arrive in the morning early, attended by a serving-man of his family,
who walked meekly in the young chief's footsteps, carrying the usual
gift for me. Sometimes it was sugar-cane, or a wreath woven by the
village girls, or a single fish wrapped in a piece of banana-leaf, or a
few fresh water prawns, or even a bunch of wayside flowers; my little
son seldom came empty-handed.

It was Pola who really taught me the Samoan language. Ordinarily the
natives cannot simplify their remarks for foreigners, but Pola invented
a sort of Samoan baby-talk for me; sometimes, if I could not understand,
he would shake me with his fierce little brown hands, crying, "Stupid,
stupid!" But generally he was extremely patient with me, trying a
sentence in half a dozen different ways, with his bright eyes fixed
eagerly on my face, and when the sense of what he said dawned upon me
and I repeated it to prove that I understood, his own countenance would
light up with an expression of absolute pride and triumph. "Good!" he
would say, approvingly. "Great is your high-chief wisdom!"

Once we spent a happy afternoon together in the forest picking up queer
land-shells, bright berries and curious flowers, while Pola dug up a
number of plants by the roots. I asked him the next day what he had done
with the beautiful red flowers. His reply was beyond me, so I shook my
head. He looked at me anxiously for a moment with that worried
expression that so often crossed his face in conversation with me, and,
patting the floor, scraped up an imaginary hole, "They sit down in the
dusty," he said in baby Samoan. "Where?" I asked. "In front of Tumau."
And then I understood that he had planted them in the ground before his
mother's house.

Another time he came up all laughter and excitement to tell of an
adventure.

"Your brother," he said, "the high-chief Loia, he of the four eyes
(eye-glasses), came riding by the village as I was walking up to
Vailima. He offered me a ride on his chief-horse and gave me his
chief-hand. I put my foot on the stirrup, and just as I jumped the horse
shied, and, as I had hold of the high-chief Loia, we both fell off into
the road