“This talk is becoming rather annoying, my dear,” shivered Mrs. Tremaine.
“I beg your pardon, then,” responded her husband, quickly. “We’ll consider something more cheerful.”
“Dat’s w’ut Ah gwine come to tell yo’ ’bout,” declared Ham, gravely. “Ladies an’ gemmen, luncheon’s done served. Yassuh!”
CHAPTER VIII
A CRACK SHOT AT THE GAME
WHILE the party were thus engaged in discussing the luncheon, the young Randolph referred to, Jefferson being his Christian name, was busy in another room of the bungalow, cleaning alligator rifles.
Jeff was the sixteen-year-old son of Officer Randolph. Despite his youth, this young man, who was tall, slim, wiry and strong, had already led several successful alligator hunts in the Everglades. He had been engaged, on his father’s recommendation, for this expedition. Officer Randolph, in the meantime, had consented to make his headquarters aboard the “Restless,” which fact permitted both Tom and Joe to get their first taste of alligator sport.
Throughout the luncheon, Oliver Dixon, though he had succeeded in obtaining the chair next to Ida Silsbee’s, remained for the most part silent and distrait, a prey to hatred of the young motor boat captain.
“If a few more things like this adventure happen,” Dixon told himself, “I shall be pretty certain to find Ida slipping away from me altogether. It seems absurd to think of a full-grown young woman like her falling in love with a mere boy. Bah! That really can’t happen, of course. Yet it isn’t wholly unlikely that she’ll become so much interested in Tom Halstead’s kind that my sort of man won’t appeal to her. I must be watchful and keep myself properly in the foreground.”