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, and the servant waited. "Boy, a lemonade, please." The doctor laughed at it heartily, as a joke on himself, and glanced at the musicians under the hau tree. "Why, its the Aloha Orchestra," he said. "I thought they were with the Hawaiian Hotel on Tuesday nights. Some rumpus, I guess." His eyes paused for a moment, and dwelt upon the one who was playing a guitar and singing a Hawaiian song to the accompaniment of all the instruments. His face became grave as he looked at the singer, and it was still grave as he turned it to his companion. "Look here, Ford, isnt it time you let up on Joe Garland? I understand you are in opposition to the Promotion Committees sending him to the States on this surf-board proposition, and Ive been wanting to speak to you about it. I should have thought youd be glad to get him out of the country. It would be a good way to end your persecution of him." "Persecution?" Percival Fords eyebrows lifted interrogatively. "Call it by any name you please," Kennedy went on. "Youve hounded that poor devil for years. Its not his fault. Even you will admit that." "Not his fault?" Percival Fords thin lips drew tightly together for the moment. "Joe Garland is dissolute and idle. He has always been a wastrel, a profligate." "But thats no reason you should keep on after him the way you do. Ive watched you from the beginning. The first thing you did when you returned from college and found him working on the plantation as outside luna was to fire him--you with your millions, and he with his sixty dollars a month." "Not the first thing," Percival Ford said judicially, in a tone he was accustomed to use in committee meetings. "I gave him his warning. The superintendent said he was a capable luna. I had no objection to him on that ground. It was what he did outside working hours. He undid my work faster than I could build it up. Of what use were the Sunday schools, the night schools, and the sewing classes, when in the evenings there was Joe Garland with his infernal and eternal tum-tumming of guitar and ukulele, his strong drink, and his huladancing? After I warned him, I came upon him--I shall never forget it--came upon him, down at the cabins. It was evening. I could hear the hula songs before I saw the scene. And when I did see it, there were the girls, shameless in the moonlight and dancing--the girls upon whom I had worked to teach clean living and right conduct. And there were three girls there, I remember, just graduated from the mission school. Of course I discharged Joe Garland. I know it was the same at Hilo. People said I went out of my way when I persuaded Mason and Fitch to discharge him. But it was the missionaries who requested me to do so. He was undoing their work by his reprehensible example." "Afterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was discharged without cause," Kennedy challenged. "Not so," was the quick answer. "I had him into my private office and talked with him for half an hour." "You discharged him for inefficiency?" "For immoral living, if you please." Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound. "Who the devil gave it to you to be judge and jury? Does landlordism give you control of the immortal souls of those that toil for you? I have been your physician. Am I to expect tomorrow your ukase that I give up Scotch and soda or your patronage? Bah! Ford, you take life too seriously. Besides, when Joe got into that smuggling scrape (he wasnt in your employ, either), and he sent word to you, asked you to pay his fine, you left him to do his six months hard labour on the reef. Dont forget, you left Joe Garland in the lurch that time. You threw him down, hard; and yet I remember the first day you came to school--we boarded, you were only a day scholar--you had to be initiated. Three times under in the swimming tank--you remember, it was the regular dose every new boy got. And you held back. You denied that you could swim. You were frightened, hysterical--" "Yes, I know," Percival Ford said slowly. "I was frightened. And it was a lie, for I could swim . . . And I was frightened." "And you remember who fought for you? who lied for you harder than you could lie, and swore he knew you couldnt swim? Who jumped into the tank and pulled you out after the first under and was nearly drowned for it by the other boys, who had discovered by that time that you could swim?" "Of course I know," the other rejoined coldly. "But a generous act as a boy does not excuse a lifetime of wrong living." "He has never done wrong to you?--personally and directly, I mean?" "No," was Percival Fords answer. "That is what makes my position impregnable. I have no personal spite against him. He is bad, that is all. His life is bad--" "Which is another way of saying that he does not agree with you in the way life should be lived," the doctor interrupted. "Have it that way. It is immaterial. He is an idler--" "With reason," was the interruption, "considering the jobs out of w