ago they
two had been alone, and suddenly from nowhere this new individual had
appeared.

It was so complete. It had hair on its head, tiny finger-nails, and
hands that would grasp you. It had a whole host of little ways of its
own, and every day added to them.

In a week the extreme ugliness of the newborn child had vanished. Its
face, which had seemed carved in the imitation of a monkey's face from
half a brick, became the face of a happy and healthy baby. It seemed to
see things, and sometimes it would laugh and chuckle as though it had
been told a good joke. Its black hair all came off and was supplanted
by a sort of down. It had no teeth. It would lie on its back and kick
and crow, and double its fists up and try to swallow them alternately,
and cross its feet and play with its toes. In fact, it was exactly like
any of the thousand-and-one babies that are born into the world at
every tick of the clock.

"What will we call it?" said Dick one day, as he sat watching his son
and heir crawling about on the grass under the shade of the breadfruit
leaves.

"Hannah," said Emmeline promptly.

The recollection of another baby once heard about was in her mind, and
it was as good a name as any other, perhaps, in that lonely place,
notwithstanding the fact that Hannah was a boy.

Koko took a vast interest in the new arrival. He would hop round it and
peer at it with his head on one side; and Hannah would crawl after the
bird and try to grab it by the tail. In a few months so valiant and
strong did he become that he would pursue his own father, crawling
behind him on the grass, and you might have seen the mother and father
and child playing all together like three children, the bird sometimes
hovering overhead like a good spirit, sometimes joining in the fun.

Sometimes Emmeline would sit and brood over the child, a troubled
expression on her face and a far-away look in her eyes. The old vague
fear of mischance had returned--the dread of that viewless form her
imagination half pictured behind the smile on the face of Nature. Her
happiness was so great that she dreaded to lose it.

There is nothing more wonderful than the birth of a man, and all that
goes to bring it about. Here, on this island, in the very heart of the
sea, amidst the sunshine and the wind-blown trees, under the great blue
arch of the sky, in perfect purity of thought, they would discuss the
question from beginning to end without a blush, the object