The two girls and the Professor were in charge of
Soma and the one-eyed white man, who, we now learned, was deaf and
dumb. It was while One Eye was on guard that Barbara Herndon had been
able to bribe the Raretongan to throw the strength of his muscles upon
our side of the argument.
Holman, with lover-like longing for anything owned by the lady of his
choice, attempted to put the emerald ring in his pocket, but Maru
objected strongly. The smile fled from his face, and his broken English
nearly strangled him in his efforts to pour out enough of it to acquaint
Holman of the nature of the agreement which he had entered into with
Barbara Herndon.
"Me only show you ring, that's all!" he cried. "You look, know little
missee send me, ring mine all time. You give back."
"You had better give it back to him," I cautioned. "He has got the idea
into his head, and it will take a lot of arguing to convince him that
Miss Barbara didn't give it to him to keep."
"But she didn't!" cried Holman. "Why would she give him a ring? She just
gave him a loan of it to let him see that she had sent him to us.
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