In The Spaces Between The
Three Dishes Were Piled Young Cocoa-Nuts, Stripped Of Their Husks.
Their Eyes Had Been Opened And Enlarged; So That Each Was A
Ready-Charged Goblet.
There was a sort of side-cloth in one corner, upon which, in bright,
buff jackets, lay the fattest of bananas; "avees," red-ripe:
Guavas
with the shadows of their crimson pulp flushing through a transparent
skin, and almost coming and going there like blushes; oranges,
tinged, here and there, berry-brown; and great, jolly melons, which
rolled about in very portliness. Such a heap! All ruddy, ripe, and
round - bursting with the good cheer of the tropical soil from which
they sprang!
"A land of orchards!" cried the doctor, in a rapture; and he snatched
a morsel from a sort of fruit of which gentlemen of the sanguine
temperament are remarkably fond; namely, the ripe cherry lips of Misa
Day-Born, who stood looking on.
Marharvai allotted seats to his guests; and the meal began. Thinking
that his hospitality needed some acknowledgment, I rose, and pledged
him in the vegetable wine of the cocoa-nut; merely repeating the
ordinary salutation, "Yar onor boyoee." Sensible that some
compliment, after the fashion of white men, was paid him, with a
smile, and a courteous flourish of the hand, he bade me be seated. No
people, however refined, are more easy and graceful in their manners
than the Imeeose.
The doctor, sitting next our host, now came under his special
protection.
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