Rollins, I thought, was rather unduly enthusiastic about his share of the booty. Yet no one who knew Rollins could ever possibly have questioned the absolute sincerity of him. Note- books, it appeared, were a special hobby of his! Morocco- bound note-books particularly. And when it came to faintly soggy Morocco-bound note-books, words were inadequate it seemed to express his appreciation. Nothing would do but the May Girl must inscribe it for him. "Aberner Rollins," she wrote very carefully in her round, childish hand, with a giggly flourish at the tail-tip of each word. "For Aberner Rollins from his friend May Davies. Awful Shipwreck Time, May 10th, 1919." Rollins used an inestimable number of note-books it appeared in the collection of his statistics. "The collection of statistics was the consuming passion of his life," he confided to everybody. "The consuming passion!" he reiterated emphatically. "Already," he affirmed, "he had revised and reaudited the whole fresh-egg-account of his own family for the last three generations! In a single slender tome," he bragged, "he held listed the favorite flowers of all living novelists both of America and England! Another tome bulged with the evidence that would-be suicides invariably waited for pleasant weather in which to accomplish their self-destruction! In regard to the little black Morocco volume," he kindled ecstatically, "he had already dedicated it to a very interesting new thought which had just occurred to him that evening, apropos of a little remark—a most significant little remark that had been dropped during the breakfast chat. . . . If anyone was really interested—" he suggested hopefully.
Nobody was the slightest bit interested! Nobody paid the remotest attention to him! Everybody was still too much excited about the shipwreck, and planning how best to salvage such loot as remained.
"And maybe by to-morrow there'll be even more things washed up!" sparkled the May Girl. "A real India shawl perhaps! A set of chess-men carved from a whale's tooth! Only, of course—if it should rain as hard—" she drooped as suddenly as she had sparkled.
"It can't!" said young Kennilworth. Even with the fresh crash of wind and rain at the casement he made the assertion arrogantly. "It isn't in the mind of God," he said, "to make two days as rainy as this one." The little black Pomeranian believed him anyway, and came sniffing out of the shadows to see if the arrogantly gesticulative young hand held also the gift of lump sugar as well as of prophecy.
It was immediately after supper that the May Girl decided to investigate the possibilities and probabilities of her "toy village."
Somewhat patronizingly at first but with a surprisingly rapid kindling of enthusiasm, young Kennilworth conceded his assistance.
The storm outside grew wilder and wilder. The scene inside grew snugger and snugger. The room was warm, the lamps well shaded, the tables piled with books, the chairs themselves deep as waves. "Loaf and let loaf" was the motto of the evening.
By pulling the huge wolf-skin rug away from the hearth, the May Girl and young Kennilworth achieved for their village a plane of smoothness and light that gleamed as fair and sweet as a real village common at high noon. Curled up in a fluff of white the May Girl sat cross-legged in the middle of it superintending operations through a maze of sunny hair. Stretched out at full-length on the floor beside her, looking for all the world like some beautiful exotic-faced little lad, young Kennilworth lay on his elbows, adjusting, between incongruous puffs of cigarette smoke, the faintly shattered outline of a miniature church and spire, or soothing a blister of salt sea tears from the paint-crackled visage of a tiny villa. Softly the firelight flickered and flamed across their absorbed young faces. Mysteriously the wisps of cigarette smoke merged realities with unrealities.
It was an entrancing picture. And one by one everybody in the room except Rollins and myself became drawn more or less into it.
"If you're going to do it at all," argued Paul Brenswick, "you might as well do it right! When you start in to lay out a village you know there are certain general scientific principles that must be observed. Now that list to the floor there! What about drainage? Can't you see that you've started the whole thing entirely wrong?"