The Honorable Percival

								

"What for?" asked Percival, crossly.
"The Pali," said the chauffeur, impressively. "Eighteen hundred feet
above the level of the sea, where the early inhabitants of Oahu made
their last stand against the enemy."
"I'm quite sure she isn't here," said Percival. Then he caught himself,
and went into a rather elaborate explanation to cover his confusion.
"You see, I'm looking for the purser. The purser of the Saluria,
you know. He's put a nasty Chinaman in my state-room, and I've got to
find him before the ship sails."
"Everybody comes first to the Pali," said the man.
Percival glanced skeptically at the great granite cliff that seemed such
an unpromising retreat for pursers, then he stepped out of the motor,
and made his way around the sharp angle of stone wall. As he did so, a
gale struck him that sent his hat careening over the precipice. He gazed
after it in chagrin. The fact that one of the great panoramic views of
the world lay at his feet was quite obliterated by the unhappy knowledge
that an English Bowler had landed in the fork of a distant tree, defying
recovery.
"Where next, sir?" asked the chauffeur, surprised at his quick return.
"Anywhere out of this damned wind!" said Percival between his teeth.
"Your friend might be at Waikiki Beach," suggested the chauffeur,
amiably.
"He's not my friend. He's a purser, I tell you. Wants to put--"
But his words were lost in the whir of the engine. All the way back to
Honolulu and through the town Percival was seeing this strange, tropical
land through the blue eyes of a certain little untraveled Western
savage. What a revelation it must be to one used to the barren alkali
deserts of Wyoming, where, nothing grew but sage-bush and cacti! It
wouldn't be half bad, he thought, to hear what she had to say about it
all. But where was one to look for her?
"We might try the pool-rooms," suggested the chauffeur.
Percival looked at him blankly, then he remembered.
"Take me to a hat shop," he said peremptorily.
When they arrived at Waikiki Beach he got out of the motor with more
alacrity than was habitual to him, and entered the cocoanut-grove. By
Jove! he thought, it was not a bad sight to see the palms dangling over
the beach like that, with the jolly breakers rolling in, and the bay
full of changing colors. Coral reefs! That's what caused the color; he
had read it in a book somewhere. Air was good, too, fruity and salty and
not too hot. For the moment he forgot his cares; he even forgot that his
new hat was one of those peculiar shapes which Englishmen often pore
over in the advertising pages of American magazines for the sole purpose
of enjoying a sense of superb and vast superiority.
As he scanned the beach his eye was caught by three ladies and three
natives standing about a surf-boat in animated discussion. The youngest
of the ladies, who wore a bathing-suit of conspicuous hue and did most
of the talking, suddenly detached herself from the others and came