the famed Tyrian purple. It was introduced into Europe from Mexico, where the curious little insect was nourished with great care on plantations of cactus.'"'

"Just as they do next door," I remark. V. goes on, unheeding.

The sunlight is scattered like silver coins among the little round stones and on the pink verbena which nestles round the tank. The goldfish swim lazily near the surface, and the big red one eats a bit of floating stick, and then, just as I am beginning to be anxious, spits it out again to quite a surprising distance. It must have a very strong popgun inside it. A gray lizard comes out and suns himself on a patch of sunshine on the watercourse. On the edge of the tank, in a wicker pot, stands a tiny orange tree, about a foot high, composed of two twigs. On one of them are two oranges; the other is in full blossom. The H.'s bought it for half a dollar in the town. V.'s eyes leave her book and follow mine.

DOILIES MADE BY TENERIFFE WOMEN.

blossoms, and distracts V.'s attention continually. She says it tastes like hair-oil and medicine, and urges me to try it, but I have lately taken so much medicine and so little hair-oil that I have not the courage.

Amid the singing of the canaries another sound mingles suddenly the sweetest sound that can reach the ear in a thirsty landthe murmur of running water. Suddenly, also, the fallen rose and bougainvillea leaves in the dry watercourse begin to move swiftly,

borne along by the down-coming water, and in another moment it is rushing and dancing all round us, overleaping its miniature white channels, and filling the whole air with music. Juan, the gardener, comes hastening down to regulate its course among the trees of the garden and the vegetables below the terrace, for none must be wasted. Water is an expensive commodity in Teneriffe. Juan is a melancholy young man, dressed in white, with a black sash round his waist, instead of the usual red one, because he is a widower. His little son, Juanillo, runs at his heels. Juanillo is generally clad in a pink shirt, encrusted with earth. But, as today is a

saint's day, and a balloon is to go up from the bull-ring, his face is washed and powdered, and his father has arrayed him in his best blue cotton frock and sailor hat. It is a girl's frock, but his father is not aware of that, and no one, not even the old garden woman who sits opposite him on her heels picking tomatoes half the day, has told him of the mistake.

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"V.," I say reproachfully, "Prescott." "This climate does not further intellectual development," says V., unabashed. One wants the accessories of chilblains and a red nose and a fog to foster the cultivation of the mind. Just look at that beetle walking out of that clump of mignonette. What a green coat of mail! Hot weather, I should have thought, for plate armor. And-oh! look at those two red dragon flies above the tank."

We both gaze at them. The large, clashing blue ones we have seen before, but these, blood-red, poised above the water, are new to us.

Perhaps when the hibiscus flowers die they turn into red dragon flies!

A gentle chatter reaches us in our orangeflower nook. "The Icod women, " V. says, and down goes Prescott on his face on the stones, and she is off.

I am hardly less excited, but I pick up Prescott and follow more slowly.

drawn thread work have appeared here once before, and we have for some time past been anxiously waiting for others to descend from their mountains.

They are squatting on their heels, spreading out their wares on the clean stone flags under the oleander tree near the front door. The oleander ought not to be in flower in February, but it is, and has hung out dusky pink blossoms here and there among its long leaves.

The women nod and smile at us, as if we were old friends. One wears an orange silk kerchief on her head, and the other one of violet silk. They are both dressed in white cotton gowns with a pink sprig, and wear white, embroidered aprons.

V. is standing by them in the sunshine. I have often seen her gardening in England in the white blouse and blue linen skirt which she is wearing now, without noticing them. But under this blazing sky these ancient garments take out a new lease of color, and startle the eye by their vividness. Even the silver clasps at her waist seem to have undergone a fresh burnishing. She looks quite as gaily attired as these Spanish girls.

I advance cautiously. I endeavor to preserve an air of indifference, as if merely strolling past.

"Barat! Barat!" screams the pretty woman in the violet kerchief, spreading out

I look at it, shaking my head. The embroidery is exquisite. The spider web, the wheat sheaf, the rose, and the red cross, are all there beautifully finished. She throws it over a piece of pink material, and the color shines through, bringing the cunning tracery of white threads into delicate relief.

I look at my watch. Eleven o'clock. Two hours before luncheon. I may have time to buy that gown. Last time they were here it took two hours to buy a white petticoat and an apron. Gradually the household gathers around us. Victor, in easy undress, with a water jug in his hand, strolls out. Candelaria follows. The cook joins the group, holding an

She takes up the white gown. Quanto?" "Tres douros." The women hold up three fingers.

Miss D., what's a douro?"

"A peseta is worth about eightpence." "Then five about eightpences, and three times that would be-?" "Ten shillings."

V. utters an exclamation of astonishment and drops the gown.

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"My good woman, I am a pobra Inglesa.' No! No!" scream both the women, nodding and smiling at V. "Rica! Rica!" I have in the meanwhile found a small hole in the white gown. This is pointed out to the women with much pursing of lips and shaking of heads.

"Two and a half dollars," they both shriek together in Spanish, and toss the gown at V.

"Two dollars," says V., holding up two fingers.

They shriek a dissent, and she tosses back the gown at them, and goes slowly indoors. I follow her. We withdraw into her bedroom, leaving the door ajar.

The violet neckerchief follows to the door, and throws the gown once more at V.

"Two and a half dollars."

V. throws it out of the room. "Two dollars."

The gown is thrown in again. "Two dollars and two dogs."

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We close on the bargain. V. produces the money -two dollars, and two penny pieces of ten centimos with a lion on them. These the women call the big dogs, as they have no personal acquaintance with lions. The halfpence or five centimo pieces are little dogs.

We then all go smiling out into the sunshine and begin buying a child's frock.

The luncheon bell rings long before we have finished, and Mrs. D. implores us to remember that other women with equally good work will probably follow in a few days' time.

And so they pack up their bundles and walk off with them on their heads, and we return to the prosaic side of life. But even luncheon is not very prosaic today, for the table is covered with pink roses and begonias of the same shade, and among them a hideous gray manthis, about three inches long, is walking, I must own, with remarkable dignity, considering that his legs are bent the

66 What's a dollar?"

drawing of a dragon than anything else. We are going for a drive after luncheon,

tremendous noise on the round stones between the high yellow and pink walls. Half the women of the town are leaning out of their windows and quaint, roofedin balconies. Two camels, with patient, treacherous faces pass us on silent, padded feet, nearly brushing us with their loads; a young woman, with black lace mantilla and fan, comes out of a green doorway, followed by her duenna. A soldier in the street is making love apparently to three sisters at once at an upper window. We rattle with many crackings of whips past the Plaza, past the church where Nelson's flag is kept under glass, and so out along the sea road, the splendid new road, cut out of the living rock, which leads to nowhere and skirts the sea for miles.

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"Now M.," says V., reproachfully, "don't be improving. We did our duty by Cortez this morning, and this afternoon we ought to unbend." He

Our driver is certainly unbending. has lit a cigarette, and is resting his feet on the top of the splashboard. The universal smoking at first surprised us, but we are now becoming accustomed to be served by a shop

Cortez may have landed at this very point on his way to the New World," I remark.

man who is smoking, to see a priest smoking in the church, to be begged of by an old woman who is smoking, and to see the young women washing, or rather banging and rending clothes, with cigarettes in their mouths.

Presently we a hole

pass scraped out of the rock, some twenty feet above the road. It has excited our curiosity before. It is apparently inaccessible, yet shows signs of habitation. On this occasion a man is sitting in it with his long white blanket, looking very

much at home, beside a small fire, the smoke of which curls blue against the cliffside.

"I know that you will always give out now that you have seen the cave-dwellers," says V. "It will be my duty to tone down all you say when we return home."

I treat this remark with the silence it deserves. We are both dying to see these cave-dwellers, who live in the interior of the island, and who are, we are told, a remnant of the Guanches-the original inhabitants of Teneriffe before the Spanish conquest.

And now we turn back and see Santa Cruz lying like a handful of dice at the foot of a

sweeping range of hills, and beyond, behind, a small excrescence peeps up, like the top of a sugar-loaf fresh from the stores. The driver waves his cigarette at the sugar-loaf and says, 66 Pica!"

66

We have heard of the Peak all our lives. We have read how the straining eye of the traveler ever looks too low as he approaches Teneriffe, and then sees the Peak high in air above him. We have waited patiently for nearly a month, while it kept itself to itself." Now our illusions drop from us. We gaze at that snow-covered bagatelle, and then at each other in silent indignation. "Is that all?" I say at last, in the tone of a cabman looking at a "long shilling.' And apparently it is all, for a cloud rolls before it, and it is gone. A low clap of thunder is tossed about among the steep ravines past which the road runs. Make haste home, coachman, or we shall be caught in a storm! One black cloud after another is hurrying up across the jagged hilltops. Our three horses make better speed uphill than down, and we are soon clattering through Santa Cruz once more, and up the main street. A sudden whirlwind of dust catches us in the open by the bull-ring, and

with it come the first large drops of rain. But we are nearly home now. We reach the gate, and leaving the carriage we run up the short drive.

The gust has fallen as suddenly as it rose. All is very silent in the garden, where the birds nearly deafened us earlier in the day. Not a breath stirs. It is the lull before the storm. The low sun peers over the shoulder of the hill.

We look back. The peaks of the Grand Canary lie clear and ethereal against an opal sky, above a sea of changing amethyst, which near at hand melts to a shimmering green as of reflected larches in still water in spring.

Is that vision of a holy city, rising stainless, girt with amber, and crowned with pearl, above a sea of glass-can that be Santa Cruz? Nay, for surely we can almost see its streets of gold; in the silence we can almost hear the song of those who walk therein in white robes.

For one moment the rainbow flings its arch like a benediction across transfigured sea and sky and gleaming town. And then, with a sigh-as of one who sees what God would have him to be our little island world hides its face and breaks into a passion of tears.

OU want to hear 'bout me an' Tobe? Y All right den, honey; if yer jes' lay down dere and keep de kivers up ober yer so yer won' tek no col', I'll tell it to yer agin; but I 'specs yer mos' tired ob hearin' it by dis time.

Well it were dis yer way. Me an' Tobe growed up togeder, down in Fauquire, Virginny, on ole mars' plantation long wid de udder servants (an' dere was lots ob 'em-mos' as many as dere was chillun ob Isrul in de wil'nes, I reckon), and we growed monstous sot on one 'nudder.

Tobe he'd tek me to all de bush-meetin's an' de cake-walks, an' we was mostly always mo'ners togeder at de funels spite ob de res ob de yung blades dat was always er tryin' to cut Tobe out wid me.

He warn't much to look at, dat's sho', kase he war as freckled as a guinea-keat's egg, an' squint-eyed, too, let 'lone bein' tur'ible short an' bow-legged; but he war always kind and gentle-like, and he ac' like a real white gemman in his ways wid de

wimmen on de place-kinder pertectin' an' perlite-like.

Well, den, it all go 'long comf'table tel' Miss Sally-dat's your ma-got mar❜ied; den de trubble begin.

Yer see, honey, I b'long to Miss Sally, an' cou'se she want tek me 'long wid her to her new home, an' Mars' George-dat's yer pa- - he ain' mek no offer ter buy Tobe, spite ob de fac' dat Tobe he keep er throwin' out hints on de subjec'.

'Bout two days 'fore de weddin', I tries Miss Sally. I goes in her room when she war by herself, an' I axes her ain't Mars' George don' want a good stable-boy. Den I say dat his hoss what he brung wid him fum Georgy when he cum ter spen' de summer look mighty rusty an' po', like he ain' been rubbed down right; an' I say he don' look like old mars' hoss what Tobe tek care obhe jes' as fat as a pig 'fore Chris'mus, an’ as shiny as mars' bal' haid.

But Miss Sally she jes laff, an' say: "I reckon dat's one word fur de hoss an' two fur Tobe, ain' it Cynthy?" An' den she go