In the open porch, Lovaina, gaily adorned, her feet bare, but a wreath of ferns on her head, sped the dishes and the wine.  She kept the desserts before her and cut portions to suit the quality of her liking for each patron.

“Taporo e taata au ahu” said Atupu.

“The lime and the tailor,” that means, and identified Landers and Schlyter.  Landers was the “lime” because a former partner of his establishment exported limes, and Landers succeeded to his nickname.  Landers and Schlyter were good customers, so they got larger slices of dried-apple pie.

Chappe-Hall, being bidden farewell on his leaving for Auckland, was apostrophizing Tahiti in verse, all the stanzas ending in “And the glory of her eyes over all.”  There were bumpers and more, and “Bottoms up,” until a slat-like American woman bounced off the veranda with her sixth course uneaten to complain to Lovaina that her hotel was no place for a Christian or a lady.  Lovaina almost wept with astonishment and grief, but kept the champagne moving toward the Chappe-Hall table as fast as it could be cooled, meanwhile assuring the scandalized guest that nothing undecorous ever happened in the Tiare Hotel, but that it were better it did than that young men should go to evil resorts for their outbursts.

“My place respectable,” Lovaina said dignifiedly.  “I don’ ’low no monkey bizeness.  Drinkin’ wine custom of Tahiti.  Make little fun, no harm.  If they go that Cocoanut House, get in bad.”

Lovaina told me all about it.  She was quite hurt at the aspersions upon her home, and entered the dining-room in a breathing spell to sit at my table, a rather unusual honor I deeply felt.  I pledged my love for her in Pol Roger, but she would have nothing but water.

“I no drink these times,” she explained.  “Maybe some day I do again.  Make fat people too much bigger.  That flat woman from ’Nited States, ain’t she funny?  I think missionary.”

From the screened area in which the consuls dined with the broker one heard: 

“Here’s to the king, God bless him!” “Hoch der Kaiser!” “Vive la Republique!” “The Stars and Stripes!” as the glasses were emptied by the consuls and their wives and host.

Lovaina had taken up the rug in the parlor, and a graphophone ground out the music for dancing.  Ragtime records brought out the Otoman, a San Franciscan, bald and coatless.  He took the floor with Mathilde, a chic, petite, and graceful half-caste, and they danced the maxixe.  David glided with Margaret, Landers led out Lucy, and soon the room was filled with whirling couples.  A score looked on and sipped champagne, the serving girls trying to fill the orders and lose no moment from flirtation.  On the camphor-wood chest four were seated in two’s space.

When midnight tolled from the cathedral tower, there was an uncalled-for speech from a venerable traveler who apparently was not sure of the date or the exact nature of the fete: