58 MYSTIC ISLES 



the porch, barking and leaping on laps, cats scurried 

 past, and a cloud of tobacco smoke filled the close air. 

 Lovaina, in one of her sixty bright gowns, a white 

 chemise beneath, her feet bare, sat enthroned. On the 

 chest were the captain of a liner or a schooner, a tourist, 

 a trader, a girl, an old native woman, or a beach- 

 comber with money for the moment. It was the carpet 

 of state on which all took their places who would have 

 a hearing before the throne or loaf in the audience- 

 chamber. 



In her low, delightfully broken English, in vivid 

 French, or sibilant Tahitian, Lovaina issued her or- 

 ders to the girls, shouted maledictions at the cook, or 

 talked with all who came. Through that porch flowed 

 all the scandal of the South Seas — tales of hurricanes 

 and waterspouts, of shipwrecks, of accidents, of lucky 

 deals in pearls or shells, of copra, of new fashions and 

 old inhabitants, of liaisons of white and brown, of the 

 flirtations of tourists, of the Government's issuing an 

 ultimatum on the price of fish, of how the consuls quar- 

 reled at a club dinner, and of how one threw three ribs 

 of roasted beef at the other, who retorted with a whole 

 sucking pig just from the native oven, of Thomas' wife 

 leaving him for Europe after a month's honeymoon; 

 and all the flotsam and jetsam of report and rumor, of 

 joke and detraction, which in an island with only one 

 mail a month are the topics of interest. 



The porch was the clearing-house and the casual, oral 

 record of the spreading South Seas. It was the strang- 

 est salon of any capital, and Lovaina the most fascin- 

 ating of hostesses. Stories that would be frowned down 

 in many a man's club were laughed at lightly over the 



