“I saw your fire,” she said. “I’ve been watching it as I came along. I do love fires on a beach!”
“Yes?” returned Kirby vaguely.
Her confident and friendly manner disconcerted him. He had never encountered a girl like this. There was something unreal about her, walking out of the dark, up to his fire, and beginning at once to talk to him, as if she knew and trusted him.
“Won’t you sit down for a little while?” he asked, a little doubtfully.
“Thank you,” she answered promptly, and, coming nearer, sat down on the sand, facing the sea.
“She ought to know better,” thought Kirby. “She can’t know what sort of fellow I might be.”
He stood behind her, looking down at her. The firelight behind her threw her slight figure, sitting with her hands clasped about her knees, into sharp relief, but her face he could not see at all.
“Do you know,” she said earnestly, “that pirates used to come here?”
“Pirates?” he echoed.
“Yes!” she said. “I read about it in a book from the library; and last summer I think I found a pirate’s earring. Auntie said it was a curtain ring, but perhaps it wasn’t.”