ck wiped the elephant slowly and regretfully out, whilst Emmeline
felt disheartened. Then her face suddenly cleared; the seraphic smile
came into it for a moment--a bright idea had struck her.

"Dicky," she said, "draw Henry the Eight."

Dick's face brightened. He cleared the sand and drew the following
figure:

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/ \

"THAT'S not Henry the Eight," he explained, "but he will be in a
minute. Daddy showed me how to draw him; he's nothing till he gets his
hat on."

"Put his hat on, put his hat on!" implored Emmeline, gazing alternately
from the figure on the sand to Mr Button's face, watching for the
delighted smile with which she was sure the old man would greet the
great king when he appeared in all his glory.

Then Dick with a single stroke of the cane put Henry's hat on.

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/ \

Now no portrait could be liker to his monk-hunting majesty than the
above, created with one stroke of a cane (so to speak), yet Mr Button
remained unmoved.

"I did it for Mrs Sims," said Dick regretfully, "and she said it was
the image of him."

"Maybe the hat's not big enough," said Emmeline, turning her head from
side to side as she gazed at the picture. It looked right, but she felt
there must be something wrong, as Mr Button did not applaud. Has not
every true artist felt the same before the silence of some critic?

Mr Button tapped the ashes out of his pipe and rose to stretch himself,
and the class rose and trooped down to the lagoon edge, leaving Henry
and his hat a figure on the sand to be obliterated by the wind.

After a while, as time went on, Mr Button took to his lessons as a
matter of course, the small inventions of the children assisting their
utterly untrustworthy knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, as useful as any
other there amidst the lovely poetry of the palm trees and the sky.

Days slipped into weeks, and weeks into months, without the appearance
of a ship--a fact which gave Mr Button very little trouble; and even
less to his charges, who were far too busy and amused to bother about
ships.

The rainy season came on them with a rush, and at the words "rainy
season" do not conjure up in your mind the vision of a rainy day in
Manchester.

The rainy season here was quite a lively time. Torrential showers
followed by bursts of sunshine, rainbows, and rain-dogs in the sky, and
the delicious perfume of all manner of growing things