Ah! that of a young officer coolly smiling from out a puffy storm of blue powder-blisters which rimmed his face, and covered his neck and wrists--with a powder-hole smoking upon his breast--holding out a right hand, humorously, to a paling private.
“Oh! if Iver--if Iver could squelch his powder-puff--the one exploding in him, I can.... There! There! Girls! I didn’t mean to take a joke so badly. I am a jealous cross-cat, especially where----”
The faltering tongue refused to speak the brother’s name.
“And we didn’t mean to hurt you! We were--thoughtless.” Sybil’s penitent speech, still shooting a cataract of frothy gurgles, tumbled towards sobs. “But we--we found some of the luminous powder that Olive has in a tiny bottle--very little, it’s so fearfully expensive--powder that shines in the dark, which she mixes with a few drops of oil to make radio-paint. Of course it isn’t ra-radium--really, but----”
Shooting rapids of laughter, between boulders of sobs, the explanations of Olive’s sister wavered towards collapse.
“You know, or I guess you don’t know, for she has kept it secret--a secret that shines in the dark--that Olive is determined, when we get back to the city, to go to work at something--anything--to release a man--a man for the front! Any kind of work for Olive, so long’s it isn’t farming or gardening! So she has been learning how to paint dials for aëroplanes and submarines--radio-dials on which the arrows and figures shine like cat’s eyes at night; the darker it is, the more they shine! She means to practise the work down here, but hasn’t begun yet. She’s kept the paint and the secret hidden away. But I knew, and I----”
“You thought of painting a luminous figurehead on my dory! The powder is composed of radio-active substances, I suppose.” Sara was laughing herself, now. “Well! it certainly does shine. No submarine officer could fail to see his depth-gauge, if he was diving by it, with lights out; or aviator----”
“Shine! Glory hallelujah! It costs enough to outshine diamonds--everything else on earth, except radium itself!” wailed Sybil--called, by the Council Fire, Light of the Home--glancing down at the pin-head galaxy upon her arm. “I suppose if--when--Olive discovers that I stole some, I’ll have to pay for it,”--rocking with stifled laughter as she looked at the bead-eyed dory--“with--with a month’s allowance of pocket-money!”
“Serve you right, too! I’m glad of it! Wasting anything so precious in war-time! But what a brick Olive is--bent on going to work to release a man! I wonder she didn’t tell me, at any rate! I suppose she thought I’d write of it to Iver--over there--and she’d hate to be advertised as a heroine--in a mild sort of way!” This last a softened little windy-weep-sighing as Sara, without another glance at the dragonized dory, started back towards camp.
“So--so it’s anything but gardening--or farm-work--for her! I wonder how she’ll keep up at fighting barb-weed and witch-grass to-morrow. I’ll be a barbed weed again myself if I don’t turn in now. Well! come along, Galaxy! I forgive you! You certainly are a radiant--blighter!”