began to
describe to us--to act to us, in the tone of an actress walking through
a rehearsal--the whole bearing of her angry guests; indicating the
really tragic notes when they came in, so that Fanny and I were ashamed
to laugh, and touching off the merely ludicrous with infinite tact and
sly humour; showing, in fact, in her whole picture of a couple of irate
barbarian women, the whole play and sympathy of what we call the
civilised mind; the contrast was seizing. I speak with feeling. To-day
again, being the first day humanly possible for me, I went down to Apia
with Fanny, and between two and three hours did I argue with that old
woman--not immovable, would she had been! but with a mechanical mind
like a piece of a musical snuff-box, that returned always to the same
starting-point; not altogether base, for she was long-suffering with me
and professed even gratitude, and was just (in a sense) to her son, and
showed here and there moments of genuine and not undignified emotion;
but O! on the other side, what lapses--what a mechanical movement of the
brain, what occasional trap-door devils of meanness, what a wooden front
of pride! I came out damped and saddened and (to say truth) a trifle
sick. My wife had better luck with the daughter; but O, it was a weary
business!

To add to my grief--but that's politics. Before I sleep to-night I have
a confession to make. When I was sick I tried to get to work to finish
that Samoa thing; wouldn't go; and at last, in the colic time, I slid
off into _David Balfour_,[35] some 50 pages of which are drafted, and
like me well. Really I think it is spirited; and there's a heroine that
(up to now) seems to have attractions: _absit omen!_ David, on the
whole, seems excellent. Alan does not come in till the tenth chapter,
and I am only at the eighth, so I don't know if I can find him again;
but David is on his feet, and doing well, and very much in love, and
mixed up with the Lord Advocate and the (untitled) Lord Lovat, and all
manner of great folk. And the tale interferes with my eating and
sleeping. The join is bad; I have not thought to strain too much for
continuity; so this part be alive, I shall be content. But there's no
doubt David seems to have changed his style, de'il ha'e him! And much I
care, if the tale travel!

_Friday, Feb.?? 19th?_--Two incidents to-day which I must narrate. After
lunch, it was raining pitilessly; we were sitting in my mother's
bedroom, and I was reading