Then, again, the house wanted rebuilding, and Mr. Button said every day he would set about seeing after it to-morrow, and on the morrow it would be to-morrow. The necessities of the life they led were a stimulus to the daring and active mind of the boy; but he was always being checked by the go-as-you-please methods of his elder. Dick came of the people who make sewing machines and typewriters. Mr. Button came of a people notable for ballads, tender hearts, and potheen. That was the main difference.

“Paddy!” again cried the boy, when he had eaten as much as he wanted. “Hullo! where are you?”

They listened, but no answer came. A bright-hued bird flew across the sand space, a lizard scuttled across the glistening sand, the reef spoke, and the wind in the tree-tops; but Mr. Button made no reply.

“Wait,” said Dick.

He ran through the grove towards the aoa where the dinghy was moored; then he returned.

“The dinghy is all right,” he said. “Where on earth can he be?”

“I don’t know,” said Emmeline, upon whose heart a feeling of loneliness had fallen.

“Let’s go up the hill,” said Dick; “perhaps we’ll find him there.”

They went uphill through the wood, past the water-course. Every now and then Dick would call out, and echoes would answer—there were quaint, moist-voiced echoes amidst the trees—or a bevy of birds would take flight. The little waterfall gurgled and whispered, and the great banana leaves spread their shade.

“Come on,” said Dick, when he had called again without receiving a reply.

They found the hill-top, and the great boulder stood casting its shadow in the sun. The morning breeze was blowing, the sea sparkling, the reef flashing, the foliage of the island waving in the wind like the flames of a green-flamed torch. A deep swell was spreading itself across the bosom of the Pacific. Some hurricane away beyond the Navigators or Gilberts had sent this message, and was finding its echo here, a thousand miles away, in the deeper thunder of the reef.

Nowhere else in the world could you get such a picture, such a combination of splendour and summer, such a vision of freshness and strength, and the delight of morning. It was the smallness of the island, perhaps, that closed the charm and made it perfect. Just a bunch of foliage and flowers set in the midst of the blowing wind and sparkling blue.

Suddenly Dick, standing beside Emmeline on the rock, pointed with his finger to the reef near the opening.

“There he is!” cried he.

CHAPTER XXI

The Garland of Flowers

YOU COULD just make the figure out lying on the reef near the little cask, and comfortably sheltered from the sun by an upstanding lump of coral.

“He’s asleep,” said Dick.

He had not thought to look towards the reef from the beach, or he might have seen the figure before.

“Dicky!” said Emmeline.

“Well?”

“How did he get over, if you said the dinghy was tied to the tree?”