him?" I cried.

"_Ioe_, yes," said she. "I like too much!"

"Well!" I said. "And suppose I had come round after?"

"I like you more better now," said she. "But, suppose I marry Ioane, I
one good wife. I no common Kanaka. Good girl!" says she.

Well, I had to be pleased with that; but I promise you I didn't care
about the business one little bit. And I liked the end of that yarn no
better than the beginning. For it seems this proposal of marriage was
the start of all the trouble. It seems, before that, Uma and her mother
had been looked down upon, of course, for kinless folk and
out-islanders, but nothing to hurt; and, even when Ioane came forward,
there was less trouble at first than might have been looked for. And
then, all of a sudden, about six months before my coming, Ioane backed
out and left that part of the island, and from that day to this Uma and
her mother had found themselves alone. None called at their house, none
spoke to them on the roads. If they went to church, the other women drew
their mats away and left them in a clear place by themselves. It was a
regular excommunication, like what you read of in the Middle Ages, and
the cause or sense of it beyond guessing. It was some _tala pepelo_, Uma
said, some lie, some calumny; and all she knew of it was that the girls
who had been jealous of her luck with Ioane used to twit her with his
desertion, and cry out, when they met her alone in the woods, that she
would never be married. "They tell me no man he marry me. He too much
'fraid," she said.

The only soul that came about them after this desertion was Master Case.
Even he was chary of showing himself, and turned up mostly by night; and
pretty soon he began to table his cards and make up to Uma. I was still
sore about Ioane, and when Case turned up in the same line of business I
cut up downright rough.

"Well," I said, sneering, "and I suppose you thought Case 'very pretty'
and 'liked too much'?"

"Now you talk silly," said she. "White man, he come here, I marry him
all-e-same Kanaka; very well, then he marry me all-e-same white woman.
Suppose he no marry, he go 'way, woman he stop. All-e-same thief, empty
hand, Tonga-heart--no can love! Now you come marry me. You big
heart--you no 'shamed island-girl. That thing I love you for too much. I
proud."

I don't know that ever I felt sicker all the days of my life. I laid
down my fork, and I put away "the island-girl"; I didn't seem somehow to
have any