Strange waters, strange skies—a strange, lost land aquiver under an exotic sun; and there she sat with her wise eyes of a child, unconcerned, watching the world in perfect confidence.
"May I pay a little compliment to your pluck?" I asked, amused.
"Certainly," she said, smiling as the maid of Manhattan alone knows how to smile—shyly, inquiringly—with a lingering hint of laughter in the curled lips' corners. Then her sensitive features fell a trifle. "Not pluck," she said, "but necessity; I had no chance to choose, no time to wait. My last dollar, Mr. Gilland, is in my purse!"
With a gay little gesture she drew it from her shirt-front, then, smiling, sat turning it over and over in her lap.
The sun fell on her hands, gilding the smooth skin with the first tint of sunburn. Under the corners of her eyes above the rounded cheeks a pink stain lay like the first ripening flush on a wild strawberry. That, too, was the mark left by the caress of wind and sun. I had had no idea she was so pretty.
"I think we'll enjoy this adventure," I said; "don't you?"
"I try to make the best of things," she said, gazing off into the horizon haze. "Look," she added; "is that a man?"
A spot far away on the beach caught my eye. At first I thought it was a pelican—and small wonder, too, for the dumpy, waddling, goose-necked individual who loomed up resembled a heavy bottomed bird more than a human being.
"Do you suppose that could be Mr. Slunk?" asked the stenographer, as our vehicle drew nearer.
He looked as though his name ought to be Slunk; he was digging coquina clams, and he dug with a pecking motion like a water-turkey mastering a mullet too big for it.