“So he has! Had! Mine’s like it--somewhat! Oh-h, quite often my flame’s a powder-puff!” Sara Davenport was quivering from neck to heel now, with the purest, proudest flame that can crown a young heart, that of a seventeen-year-old girl’s pride in her hero-brother.
“But, oh! there’ll be no excuse for its--ever--being a spitfire in future; if Iver could--master.... Hif-f! He must be suffering--ter-ri-bly!”
The other, older, dark-eyed girl was silent. But perhaps, at that moment, as she drew her breath sharply through closed teeth, even the romance of looking through a periscope’s eye, with a Junior Aide, having a fascinating gold epaulet cord drooping from his left shoulder, paled beside the romance of that victor’s eye, humorously smiling, triumphant alike over pain and passion.
CHAPTER V
CAMOUFLAGE
“A camouflaged dory! Well, if that isn’t a joke! If that isn’t original!”
The cry came, in laughing accents, from three or four Camp Fire Girls lounging upon a milk-white beach, absorbed in the occupation of another of their number, whose wet paint-brush dripped sky-beams upon the sands--blue sky-beams that winked dazzlingly in the August sun, as if filched from heaven’s own arch above.
“Original! About as original as Sara herself! Nobody else would think of it! A humble little dory that doesn’t go more than a mile from shore, and couldn’t come in on a sea-chase of any kind!
“How--how do you know what she’ll come in on?” The artist swung her azure-dripping brush, contemplating her dory’s dazzling side, as she lazily replied to her companions’ further comments. “How do I know what I’ll come in on myself? Queer times these--war-times! I shouldn’t be surprised, some fine morning, to find myself scouring cloud-land as a sky-skimmer, or--or----Now! where did I see that face before?
“Not on this beach, anyway. He’s the first man I’ve noticed around here. Goody! I welcome the sight of him.”