Dr Whitaker’s eyes flashed angrily as he cried in surprise: ‘What! all my specimens, Euphemia! all my specimens! all the ferns and orchids and curious club-mosses I brought in from Pimento Valley Scrubs early this morning!’ Miss Euphemia tossed her head contemptuously in the air. ‘Yes, Wilberforce,’ she answered with a placid smile; ‘every one of dem. I burn de whole nasty lot of bush an’ trash togedder. An’ den, when I finished, I burn de dry ones—de nasty dry tings you put in de cupboards all around de study.’ Dr Whitaker started in horror. ‘My herbarium!’ he cried—‘my whole herbarium! You don’t mean to say, Euphemia, you’ve actually gone and wantonly destroyed my entire collection?’ ‘Yes,’ Miss Euphemia responded cheerfully, nodding acquiescence several times over; ‘I burn de whole lot of dem—paper an’ everyting. De nasty tings, dey bring in de cockroach an’ de red ants into de study cupboards.’ The mulatto rushed back eagerly and hastily into his own study; he flung open the cupboard doors, and looked with a sinking heart into the vacant spaces. It was too true, all too true! Miss Euphemia had destroyed in a moment of annoyance the entire result of his years of European collection and his five months’ botanical work since he had arrived in Trinidad. The poor young man sat down distracted in his easy-chair, and flinging himself back on the padded cushions, ruefully surveyed the bare and empty shelves of his rifled cupboards. It was not so much the mere loss of the pile of specimens—five months’ collection only, as well as the European herbarium he had brought with him for purposes of comparison—the one could be easily replaced in a second year; the other could be bought again almost as good as ever from a London dealer—it was the utter sense of loneliness and isolation, the feeling of being so absolutely misunderstood, the entire want of any reasonable and intelligent sympathy. He sat there idly for many minutes, staring with blank resignation at the empty cases, and whistling to himself a low plaintive tune, as he gazed and gazed at the bare walls in helpless despondency. At last, his eye fell casually upon his beloved violin. He rose up, slowly and mournfully, and took the precious instrument with reverent care from its silk-lined case. Drawing his bow across the familiar strings, he let the music come forth as it would; and the particular music that happened to frame itself upon the trembling catgut on the humour of the moment was his own luckless Hurricane Symphony. For half an hour he sat there still, varying that well-known theme with unstudied impromptus, and playing more for the sake of forgetting everything earthly, than of producing any very particular musical effect. By-and-by, when his hand had warmed to its work, and he was beginning really to feel what it was he was playing, the door opened suddenly, and a bland voice interrupted his solitude with an easy flow of colloquial English.