This assurance from the careful and competent Ching gave Madame Gilbert the utmost satisfaction. Now that William, Lord Topsham, though anxious to take passage in the yacht, had refused to work for his living, she would have perished rather than seek help from him. He should learn that there were others besides himself capable of navigating his own familiar seas. She blessed the cautious foresight of the complete seaman, Robert Ching, and was prepared to trust him to save the bottom of the _Humming Top_ and the face of her owner. As for William, Lord Topsham, her resentment began to take root and grow with tropical rapidity. The boy Willatopy, whom she had loved, was in danger of being obliterated altogether. And yet until the Hedge Lawyer appeared to bring woe upon the happy Island, he had been a boy eminently lovable.
"I spent nearly two months on Tops Island," said Madame to me, when telling her story in Whitehall, "and I was exceedingly loath to depart. I had by accident picked out the very best season in the year. There was not a drop of rain, the big sun shone gloriously all day long, and the regular rise and fall of the south-east trade wind kept down the heat. In my tent, which was wide open by night and day, and had generous air spaces between the walls and roof, the temperature never rose above 85 nor sank below 65. We called that winter in the South, but it was just a perfect English summer, smiling upon the tropical growth of a Pacific island. Whenever I thought of a return to a desolate European autumn, I shuddered to my bones. If I were not an intensely modern woman," she went on reflectively, "I would spend three months of every year in Tops Island. But it takes such a devil of a long time to go and return. And perhaps my second stay would be so unlike my first--there would be no Willatopy and no _Humming Top_--that I should never go again. It is always a mistake to seek the repetition of a delightful experience. I don't suppose that I shall ever again see little Mrs. Toppys, the Hula wife of wise mad William, or those dear girls in the banana-leaf petticoats. They had lost their shyness of me, and clung about my neck when the motor boat came to bear me off for the last time. I consoled them with bright chains for their brown necks, and gave to the Topy family two of Sir John's tents and quite a lot of his camp gear. I am afraid that all through my Southern adventure I made very free with the property of our good profiteer of Wigan. He never called me to account, the dear thing. The last I saw of my camping ground, as the boat sped off, was the three Topy women kneeling on the sand crying to me to come back. I wonder what they would think of me now if they knew all."