hat Schneider took in French Eva. He told me that, straight,
emphasizing his statements with a rusty spanner, which he wielded in a
curious, classical way, like a trident. According to him, Schneider was
bothering the life out of the girl. "Always asking her to dress up and
come over to chow with him at the hotel." And the spanner went down as
if Neptune were rebuking the seas.

"Does she go?"

"No."

"Well, then--can't you leave the lady to discourage him in her own way?"

"She won't go to the ho-tel, because she hates Ching Po. But she walks
out with him Sunday afternoons. He gives her gimcracks."

"Then she likes him?"

"There's no telling. She's a real lady." And the discouraged Stires
beat, with his spanner, a refrain to his involuntary epigram.

"She can take care of herself, can't she?" I had watched her deal with a
drunken Solomon Islander, and did not see how Schneider could be a match
for her.

"I don't know." Stires's lazy drawl challenged the sunset.

"Anything I can do?" I asked as I rose.

"Unless you go in and cut him out," he meditated with a grin.

"But I'm not in love with her," I protested.

"You might take her to church."

But I refused. Philandering was not my forte, and church, in any case,
was the last thing I should venture to propose.

"Why don't you go in yourself?"

Stires scratched his head. The trident trailed upon the ground. "It's
serious or nothing with me, I guess. And she's got something against me.
I don't know what. Thinks I don't blarney the Kanakas enough, perhaps.
Then there's Follet."

"Oh, is he in it?" I forgot to go.

"He's more in it than I am, and I'm darned if I know what she's up to
with the three of us. I'm playing 'possum, till I find out."

"If you can stand Follet butting in, why can't you stand Schneider?
Safety in numbers, you know."

"Well, Mr. Follet belongs here. I can have it out with him any time.
He'll have to play the game. But if I know Schneider, there's no wedding
bells in his. And Mam'selle Eva hasn't, as you might say, got a
chaperon."

The spectacle of "Mam'selle Eva," as I had last seen her, perspiring,
loosely girdled, buying a catch of fish at a fair price from three
mercenary natives adorned with shark's-tooth necklaces, rose before me.

"Man alive, you don't have to chaperon _her_," I cried. "She's on to
everything."

The sun-and-wind-whipt eyes flashed at me. The spanner trembled a
little.

"Don't misunderstand me," I