It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to purchase the pup, but a quick glance at the girl checked him. She was evidently perfectly sincere, and the quality of her was unmistakable.
Already, within these few minutes, her skin had begun to burn a delicate rose tint from the sun's fierce reflection on the white sands. Her hair was a splendid golden brown, her eyes darker, or perhaps the long, dark lashes made them seem so. She was daintily and prettily made, head, throat, shoulders, and limbs; she wore a summer gown so waistless and limp that it conformed to the corsetless fashions in vogue, making evident here and there the contours of her slim and supple figure.
From the tip of her white shoe to the tip of her hat she was the futile and exquisite essence of Gotham.[163]
Gray realised it because he lived there himself. But he could not understand where all her determination and obstinacy came from, for she seemed so young and inexperienced, and there was about her a childish dewiness of eye and lip that suggested a blossom's fragrance.
She was very lovely; and that was all very well in its way, but Gray had come down there on stern business, and how long his business might last, and how long he was to inhabit a palmetto bungalow above the coquina quarry he did not know. The coquina quarry was as hot as the infernal pit. Also, snakes frequented it.
No black servant—promised him faithfully in St. Augustine the day before—had yet arrived. A few supplies had been sent over from St. Augustine, and he was camping in his little house of logs, along with wood-ticks, blue lizards, white ants, gophers, hornets, and several chestnut-colored scorpions.
"I wouldn't mind yielding the dog to you," he admitted, "if I were not so horribly lonely on this miserable island. When evening comes, you will go back to luxury and comfort somewhere or other, with dinner awaiting you and servants to do everything, and a nice bed to retire to. That's a pleasant picture, isn't it?"[164]
"Very," she replied, with a slight shrug.
"Now," he said, "please gaze mentally upon this other picture. I am obliged to go back to a shack haunted by every species of creature that this wretched island harbours.
"There will be no dinner for me except what I can scoop out of a tin; no servants to do one bally thing for me; no bed.