I stuck the torch point-end in the ground, stepped into the trap, and lifted my family out. All the time I prayed aloud, saying: "Lord on high, keep Right Bower from touching his blamed foot against any of these triggers and dropping the forest on top of all he holds in his arms!" Ivy, she rubbed her cheek against mine to show confidence—and then we were safe out and I picked up the torch and carried the whole kit and boodle, family, torch, happiness—much too big to tote—and belief in God's goodness, watchfulness, and mercy, home to our cave.
Right Bower added some uneventful details of the few days following—the ship's boat that put into the island for water and took them off, and so on. Then he asked me if I'd like to meet Mrs. Bower, and I went forward with him and was presented.
She was deep in a steamer-chair, half covered with a somewhat gay assortment of steamer-rugs. I had noticed her before, in passing, and had mistaken her for a child.
Bower beamed over us for a while and then left us and we talked for hours—about Bower, the children, and the home in East Orange to which they were returning after a holiday at Aix; but she wouldn't talk much about the island. "Right," she said, "was all the time so venturesome that from morning till night I died of worry and anxiety. Right says the Lord does just the right thing for the right people at the right time—always. That's his creed.... Sometimes," she said, "I wonder what's become of big Bahut. He was such a—white elephant!"
Mrs. Gordon-Colfax took me to task for spending so much of the afternoon with Mrs. Bower.
"Who," said she, "was that common little person you were flirting with?—and why?"
"She's a Mrs. Bower," I said. "She has a mission."
"I could tell that," said Mrs. Gordon-Colfax, "from the way she turned up her eyes at you."
"As long as she doesn't turn up her nose at me—" I began; but Mrs. Gordon-Colfax put in: