Olive spoke first when the puzzled mirth subsided.
“Come up here, little Kitty,” she said. “Sit on the steps—I’m going to dress in a minute; I’m just sunning myself—and tell us what you used to do on the farm where you live and in the orchard. How did you amuse yourself?”
“Mostly I played with the ducks an’ hens—an’ with Mary-Jane Peg,” replied Kitty’s lips and fluttering ribbons gravely.
“Who is Mary-Jane Peg?”
“She’s a pig—a very nice pig.”
“He! He! He! Hi!... Ha! Isn’t she too green for anything—the greenest little hayseed, greenest little guy—naming a pig like that?”
No need to ask whence came the tingling titter! Penelope had come up out of the water, too, Penelope of the swinging gate who, in view of her home handicaps and her sisterly service to younger brothers, had been invited by the Guardian of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire to join its circle and camp out, here, with its members.
“He! He! Ha-a-a!” rattled on Penny and, suddenly, in the midst of her stampeding laughter became conscious of a chill, that her mirth and her remark, both, shot wild, skated like pebbles over a frozen surface, grated upon an icy silence.
The chill suddenly started a fever. Desperately she ran down the white beach to hide her burning cheeks in the water.
“I said she had the mild manners of a hurricane—a Caribbean Sea hurricane!” mumbled Captain Andy between puffs of laughter. “Her core is gusty, but it’s good. Well! I must be off to hunt up a chunk o’ birch wood or some other hard wood to whittle it into a big top—otherwise you can’t play that Kullibígan guessing-game to-night. An’ Kitty wants to ask a question of that fortune-telling top, eh, Kitty?” He dropped a wink upon the Doomed One, whose conviction of early death was melting away, like snow in May, into the filmy, sunlight haze that hung over the sand-peaks of the Sugarloaf. “No! you stay here along with the other girls an’ get acquainted. I’ll be back soon.”