Wings of the Wind

by Credo Fitch Harris

"I didn't mean just that," I stammered, feeling my cheeks grow hot. For, albeit, Doloria had slept part of a night with her head against my shoulder when we fared alone in the purity of our wilderness, now, since others of the world were touching elbows with us, Echochee's words knocked me rather into a self-conscious heap. But such is the bitter tithe we must toss into the maw of civilization which, despite its multitude of admitted blessings, breeds also the false! And I stepped into the punt wishing that this daughter of our oldest American family could be divinely appointed arbiter of our customs.

Smilax returned with word that both yachts would be at Little Cove, and one by one the lights in our camp went out. But I sat late at Efaw Kotee's desk writing a ten-page telegram and a fifty-page letter to my father. Both of these I would despatch from Key West—the wire telling him to bring the Mater to Miami where the letter would await them; and I urged them both, as they loved me, to pick up a certain darling of the gods named Nell. Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that, and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible. But this pet scheme I intended to keep from Tommy. It would repay him for his masterly scheme of sailing both yachts homeward.

The next morning after an early breakfast our cavalcade set forth, each man carrying a pack except the two sailors on whose shoulders rested the poles of Doloria's chair. But in this chair sat a very sad little princess—this morning particularly, as she was leaving a nominal home for a new and mystifying adventure. Whatever else Efaw Kotee had been to her, at least he stood in her memory of father; and however irrevocably she may have turned against him, the very fact that she found it necessary to do so was a grievous disappointment.

All that had passed. Strangers had come, and in a few days she was being borne to the other half of the world. To her mother!—what did she know of a mother? To a throne!—but with an unknown prince to rule beside her? And these were entirely apart from the longings she might leave on this side of the world. Surely, if she needed sympathy at any time it was now as the march began.

Although Monsieur had taken a position close to her, and evidently meant to keep it, before we had gone very far I fell in alongside with them, asking:

"How do you find the march? Tiring?"

"Oh, no, not in Tommy's flying throne, as he calls it,"—and in an undertone she added: "I wish it were the only throne I had to occupy."

But the professor, overhearing this—for little escaped him now—cleared his throat and stepped nearer.

"She is mistaken, my boy Jack," he said suavely. "The march is quite fatiguing, and I must insist that she conserve her strength. There will be no more conversation."

Taken aback by this, I was on the point of giving him a jolly good blowing up, but her ready acquiescence caused me to desist. Really, I began to wonder if he had her hypnotized; and, furious—indeed, quite a good deal hurt—by the cool way she obeyed him and began to ignore me, I marched grimly ahead.