"It is not!" said Jaffrey Bretton with some coldness. "Martha is a crazy lady. Do we look to you like crazy ladies?"
"Oh, no—of course not," flushed the intruder. "Only—only it is so awfully hard sometimes to place people without their clothes."
"Without their clothes?" flared Daphne. "Why these are our clothes! Our very own clothes!" As though in indisputable proof of the assertion she edged even closer to her father's side and began to stroke such shoulder and such sleeve as her father's swimming suit boasted.
But, gentle as the gesture was, it only served somehow to 124 increase the Intruding Lady's nervousness.
"Why—of course—I—I didn't mean that," she stammered. "It's only that that running on you so suddenly the way I did, I——" With a gesture of sheer helplessness she threw out her hands. "Well, there are so many queer people down here!" she cried. "Fanatics and fruit growers and runaway people—and—and fanatics!" In an access of bewilderment her glance swept out across Daphne's slim, nymph-like loveliness to the wild island scene all around them, and back again to Jaffrey Bretton's distinctly sophistcated eyes. "For all I know," she affirmed with a palpable effort at lightness, "you may be fugitives from justice!"
"Call us rather—fugitives from injustice," bowed Jaffrey Bretton, with the faintest possible smile.
Tugging at the brim of her brown khaki hat, fumbling at the collar of her brown khaki shirt, patting at the flare of her brown khaki skirt, the Intruding Lady began very suddenly to tinker with her personal appearance.
"Now, isn't that funny?" jerked Daphne. "Whenever my father 125 smiles, smiles like that, I mean—so faint, so twinkly—every woman in sight except myself begins to straighten her hat and——"
"Hush such nonsense!" ordered her father.
But the Intruding Lady, without showing an atom of resentment, wilted right down in the hot sands and began to laugh. It was a clever laugh, too, though still just a little bit wobbly round its edges.