Watch
the others going the same pace. There's your brother Hal. He
can't keep it up and live five years, and he's breaking his uncles'
hearts. And there's Prince Lilolilo. Dashes by me with half a
hundred mounted, able-bodied, roystering kanakas in his train who
would be better at hard work and looking after their future, for he
will never be king of Hawaii. He will not live to be king of
Hawaii.'
"George was right. Brother Hal died. So did Prince Lilolilo. But
George was not ALL right. He, who neither drank nor smoked, who
never wasted the weight of his arms in an embrace, nor the touch of
his lips a second longer than the most perfunctory of kisses, who
was invariably up before cockcrow and asleep ere the kerosene lamp
had a tenth emptied itself, and who never thought to die, was dead
even more quickly than Brother Hal and Prince Lilolilo.
"'Be patient, Bella,' Uncle Robert would say to me. 'George
Castner is a coming man. I have chosen well for you. Your
hardships now are the hardships on the way to the promised land.
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