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honorary member, and presented with the freedom of the billiard table and the smoking-room, as it were. This was a new field of study to the artist, whose club life had been somewhat neglected. He belonged to one or two literary and artistic societies in London, but the easy-going, brotherly, sporting atmosphere of the colonial club was entirely new to him, and he found it extremely fascinating, for the time being. It was very pleasant to sit at breakfast by the open window, framed in a crimson Bougainvillea as high as the house, eating rock oysters just gathered from the rocks below, and drinking coffee composed by the club chef (a celebrity honourably known all over the colonies), while the amethyst water of the harbour spread out in a fan-shaped estuary for miles before him, and the purple islands that barred its entrance seemed anchored in the paler azure of the misty horizon; and the brown-faced athletic young fellows around him talked incessantly (in what appeared to him an unintelligible jargon) of their ponies and races and various games. This week happened to be the time of one of those colonial carnivals which so frequently lighten the lot of the exile in these waters—a week given over to races, dances, polo, and every sort of athletic game which could be played either with or with-