"Goodness," the worldly Minga was impressed. "Why don't Tiffany or somebody come up and get these? There might be a fortune in the Hackensack."
"They've had men up here," interposed Colter quietly, "but there wasn't enough in it for them."
The party turned and looked at him questioningly; Colter took the phial Shipman handed him. "You see, they never grow very large," he explained, examining a pearl that rolled into his hand. "There is some substance lacking, but whatever it is, the reason isn't known, I think."
"Just the same, it will be fun to hunt for them." Shipman was as eager as a boy. "I have an extra skiff at that little house you see by the bridge up yonder; suppose I bring that; we can have a flotilla," he nodded to Colter, who nodded back.
"Surely," he agreed.
The voice, courteous of inflection, assured in enunciation, arrested the lawyer's attention as it had arrested Sard's. As the girls slipped to the ground, moving about the car, captivating in their trim camping costumes, the lawyer, his eye taking in their assured grace, the lithe precision of their movements, swept a curious eye over their companion.
The newly-shaven chin, the dark red hair brushed back and hands with nails that had once been well-shaped and cared for, mystified him with the sense of hidden identity, and yet he got no sense of purposeful concealment. Somehow the man seemed like a person who moved in a dream; what he said and did was done automatically, as if the Self had no abiding interest in his activities. The lawyer was conscious of a certain sense of mystery as he turned to assist with the tea basket and things.
"Can I help?"
"Thanks, if you'll bear a hand with those bottles." As Shipman grasped the things held out to him he looked for a moment full into the other's eyes, eyes that met his quite quietly, too, but with an awful look of question.
"I am a gentleman," said those eyes—"do you know me, have you ever seen me—who am I?"