Emmeline left her box on the heap of things that Paddy had placed in the shadow of the cocoa-nut trees, took his hand, and the three entered the grove on the right.

It was like entering a pine forest; the tall symmetrical stems of the trees seemed set by mathematical law, each at a given distance from the other. Whichever way you entered a twilight alley set with tree boles lay before you. Looking up you saw at an immense distance above a pale green roof patined with sparkling and flashing points of light, where the breeze was busy playing with the green fronds of the trees.

“Mr. Button,” murmured Emmeline, “we won’t get lost, will we?”

“Lost! No, faith; sure we’re goin’ uphill, an’ all we have to do is to come down again, when we want to get back—’ware nuts!” A green nut detached from up above came down rattling and tumbling and hopped on the ground. Paddy picked it up. “It’s a green cucanut,” said he, putting it in his pocket (it was not very much bigger than a Jaffa orange), “and we’ll have it for tay.”

“That’s not a cocoa-nut,” said Dick; “cocoa-nuts are brown. I had five cents once an’ I bought one, and scraped it out and y’et it.”

“When Dr. Sims made Dicky sick,” said Emmeline, “he said the wonder t’im was how Dicky held it all.”

“Come on,” said Mr. Button, “an’ don’t be talkin’, or it’s the Cluricaunes will be after us.”

“What’s cluricaunes?” demanded Dick.

“Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for the Good People.”

“Who’s they?”

“Whisht, and don’t be talkin’. Mind your head, Em’leen, or the branches’ll be hittin’ you in the face.”

They had left the cocoa-nut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here was a deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great breadfruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful the gloom.

Suddenly Mr. Button stopped.

“Whisht!” said he.

Through the silence—a silence filled with the hum and the murmur of wood insects and the faint, far song of the reef, came a tinkling, rippling sound: it was water. He listened to make sure of the bearing of the sound, then he made for it.

Next moment they found themselves in a little grass-grown glade. From the hilly ground above, over a rock black and polished like ebony, fell a tiny cascade not much broader than one’s hand; ferns grew around and from a tree above a great rope of wild convolvulus flowers blew their trumpets in the enchanted twilight.

The children cried out at the prettiness of it, and Emmeline ran and dabbled her hands in the water. Just above the little waterfall sprang a banana tree laden with fruit; it had immense leaves six feet long and more, and broad as a dinner-table. One could see the golden glint of the ripe fruit through the foliage.