of their
discussion crawling before them on the grass, and attempting to grab
feathers from Koko's tail.

It was the loneliness of the place as well as their ignorance of life
that made the old, old miracle appear so strange and fresh--as
beautiful as the miracle of death had appeared awful. In thoughts vague
and beyond expression in words, they linked this new occurrence with
that old occurrence on the reef six years before. The vanishing and the
coming of a man.

Hannah, despite his unfortunate name, was certainly a most virile and
engaging baby. The black hair which had appeared and vanished like some
practical joke played by Nature, gave place to a down at first as
yellow as sun-bleached wheat, but in a few months' time tinged with
auburn.

One day--he had been uneasy and biting at his thumbs for some time
past--Emmeline, looking into his mouth, saw something white and like a
grain of rice protruding from his gum. It was a tooth just born. He
could eat bananas now, and breadfruit, and they often fed him on
fish--a fact which again might have caused a medical man to shudder;
yet he throve on it all, and waxed stouter every day.

Emmeline, with a profound and natural wisdom, let him crawl about stark
naked, dressed in ozone and sunlight. Taking him out on the reef, she
would let him paddle in the shallow pools, holding him under the
armpits whilst he splashed the diamond-bright water into spray with his
feet, and laughed and shouted.

They were beginning now to experience a phenomenon, as wonderful as the
birth of the child's body--the birth of his intelligence, the peeping
out of a little personality with predilections of its own, likes and
dislikes.

He knew Dick from Emmeline; and when Emmeline had satisfied his
material wants, he would hold out his arms to go to Dick if he were by.
He looked upon Koko as a friend, but when a friend of Koko's--a bird
with an inquisitive mind and three red feathers in his tail--dropped in
one day to inspect the newcomer, he resented the intrusion, and
screamed.

He had a passion for flowers, or anything bright. He would laugh and
shout when taken on the lagoon in the dinghy, and make as if to jump
into the water to get at the bright-coloured corals below.

Ah me, we laugh at young mothers, and all the miraculous things they
tell us about their babies! They see what we cannot see: the first
unfolding of that mysterious flower, the mind.

One day they were out on the lag