Ralph Stock

“ Felisi shrugged her shoulders, a trick she had learnt from watching a French lady on the wharf at Levuka, and one she had found effective.
"Pretend, him all right," she pronounced sagely. "Pretend him pink coral, no white coral, plenty more money. Pretend me very, very poor, an' tired, an' know nothing, plenty heap more money."
Each one of these distressful symptoms was illustrated in tone and gesture with the instinctive faithfulness of a meke (native dance) dancer. Missus Catoni was deeply interested.
"Yes, we all have to pretend sometimes, don't we?" she mused. "Most of us are actors. ”

“ We have to be. Some are better at it than others, but most of us act."
"Act," repeated Felisi, with faithful intonation. It was a new word. She was learning many new words on the Rena River.
"Yes, pretend. I used to pretend a lot at one time, Felisi. It was my living." Missus Catoni lit one of her toy cigarettes and leant back in the chair. She was altogether beautiful, Felisi thought, with her white hands clasped behind her head, the folds of a softly-tinted kimono falling about her, and the toy cigarette moving up and down between her lips as she talked. ”

“ Amongst other fatal maladies that the ubiquitous white man in his wisdom had seen fit to inflict on the inhabitants of "The Islands of the Blest," this thing ambition had seized on Felisi's family like a plague. Money had come to Luana—copper and silver and gold—and it was discovered that these unlovely discs of metal were not without their uses. For instance, in sufficient quantities they could be exchanged for articles that it was beyond the power of Luana to produce. Had not Felisi brought back from her historic pilgrimage to Levuka a sewing-machine from Americania, and a mouth-organ? ”

“ I said I didn't like a house-boy as a personal servant, and I want something in the nature of a lady's-maid—something feminine about the house, you know."
"Ah, to be sure!" Mr. Caton thought deeply. "How about Mrs. Herbert? She might——"
"My dear, I said a lady's-maid. Mrs. Herbert would like to hear you say that."
"Then it will have to be a native of some sort. How about an Indian woman?"
"Too much like a house-boy. No, I think I should like an Islander—a country girl, for preference. I don't like those town-bred natives—they're sly." ”

“ Presently Missi Redgravie crossed the room and stood beside Missus Catoni as she played. They talked so quietly that Felisi could not hear them for a time. Then the music trailed away and left a voice, a well-modulated voice, talking quite clearly.
".... This can't go on, Joan!" They called each other by their proper names this time.
"It's my life, Tony," Missus Catoni answered him quietly.
"But you can't tell me that it is going on."
She turned on the piano-stool and looked at him, and kept looking.
"It's the life I chose," she said.
"It's death," he told her ”

“ Nothing would satisfy Felisi's father but a boat that he had seen in Levuka. Apparently it could do anything but talk, and he was not altogether certain it was not capable of that. It would carry five times as much produce to market as the big canoe, and in half the time. It—— But Felisi had forgotten the category of its virtues. The fact remained that it was necessary to collect sufficient gold discs to buy the boat—fifty in all—and, as usual, the women-folk were called upon to do the collecting. ”