For here, by rock and pool on this lonely Austral beach, it is good and sweet for man or boy to be, and, if but in utter idleness, to watch and listen--and think.
Solepa
The last strokes of the bell for evening service had scarce died away when I heard a footstep on the pebbly path, and old Pâkía, staff in hand and pipe dangling from his pendulous ear-lobe, walked quietly up the steps and sat down cross-legged on the verandah. All my own people had gone to church and the house was very quiet.
"Good evening, Pâkía," I said in English, "how are you, old man?"
A smile lit up the brown, old, wrinkled face as he heard my voice--for I was lying down in the sitting-room, smoking my after-supper pipe--as he answered in the island dialect that he was well, but that his house was in darkness and
