"Never a one un twenty years an' more now. She fetched ut on tull
herself. She drove them from the house just oz she drove old Tom
Henan, thot was her husband, tull hus death."
"Drink?" I ventured.
Mrs. Ross shook her head scornfully, as if drink was a weakness
beneath the weakest of Island McGill.
A long pause followed, during which Mrs. Ross knitted stolidly on,
only nodding permission when Clara's young man, mate on one of the
Shire Line sailing ships, came to walk out with her. I studied the
half-dozen ostrich eggs, hanging in the corner against the wall
like a cluster of some monstrous fruit. On each shell were painted
precipitous and impossible seas through which full-rigged ships
foamed with a lack of perspective only equalled by their sharp
technical perfection. On the mantelpiece stood two large pearl
shells, obviously a pair, intricately carved by the patient hands
of New Caledonian convicts. In the centre of the mantel was a
stuffed bird-of-paradise, while about the room were scattered
gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral
sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais
from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan
tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang
from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai
bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the
Indies and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious woods.
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