In the midst of this excitement came disaster.
Lulu dropped her mirror.
It hit square and shattered on the sand to many brilliant splinters. Lulu fell like a stone, seized the empty frame, gazed into it for a heart-broken second, burst into tears.
It was the first time that the men as a group had ever seen in the flying-girls an exhibition of this feminine faculty. For a moment, they watched her, deeply interested, as though confronted by an unfamiliar phenomenon. Then Billy wriggled.
“Say, stop her, somebody,” he begged, “I hate to hear a woman cry.”
“So do I,” said Peter, his face twisted into creases of discomfort. “She’s your girl, Honey. Stop her, for God’s sake.”
“How’s he going to stop her, I’d like to know?” demanded Ralph. “We don’t converse very fluently yet, you know.”
“Well, I know how to stop her,” said Honey, leaping up. “I say, Lulu,” he called. “Stop that crying, that’s a good girl. It makes us all sick. I’ll find you another mirror in a moment.”
Lulu did not stop crying. Perhaps she was not too primitive to realize that tears are the argument a woman negotiates best. She wailed and wept assiduously.
Honey, in the meantime, flew to the trunks. He dumped one after another; clothes flew from either energetic hand like gravel from a shovel. Suddenly he gave a yell of triumph and brandished—. It was cheap and brass-bound, but it reflected the sunlight as well as though it had been framed in massy gold.