“Quarter witted, then,” amended her brother.
“He’s an unfortunate child, lost out of paradise, at the mercy of careless, cruel wretches like us below. I never saw a woman with a nature so spotless.”
“It occurs to me you’re partial to your Wabash angel,” observed Jack.
Jerome began to play. He was evidently in his boat plunging with the current. One could imagine him pressing against his neck the instrument which holds the saddest possibilities of sound. It wailed down river, and ceased. After an interval it began again up river. Jerome had rowed back against the current, and he went floating past the camp once more, pouring through the violin the vagaries of a mind in double darkness.
“If the trot-line wasn’t already broken, he’d break it,” remarked Captain Eric, “raking back and forth.”
“Fine cheerful banshee for a night like this,” said Jack.
Lilian huddled by the end of a log, where she could hear the oozing sap complain. Again the music died on the river, and again it began farther up, with an orchestral support of lashing water and gathering weather.
“I can’t stand it!” she cried out, rising from her place. “I’m going to my tent.”
“Why did you set Jerome on?” inquired her brother in surprise. “He never knows when to quit. I’ll put a stop to it.”
So going close to the shore he shouted such a peremptory request as virile man offers to weaklings. He patronized Jerome also, representing that the water was too rough for a boy, and recommending the boy to go home.