And so the morning wore away until Freda came with a cool-looking hamper. Then delicious cold fowl and lettuce sandwiches and champagne cup set our tongues wagging as only very young tongues can wag. Daisy went back with Freda after luncheon, leaving me a case of cigars, with a bantering smile. I dozed, half awake, keeping a partly closed eye on the ocean, where a faint gray streak showed plainly amid the azure water all around. That was the Gulf Stream loop.
About four o'clock Frisby appeared with a bamboo shelter tent, for which I was unaffectedly grateful.
After he had erected it over me he stopped to chat a bit, but the conversation bored me, for he could talk of nothing but bill-posting.
"You wouldn't ruin the landscape here, would you?" I asked.
"Ruin it!" repeated Frisby nervously. "It's ruined now; there ain't a place to stick a bill."
"The snipe stick bills—in the sand," I said flippantly.
There was no humour about Frisby. "Do they?" he asked.
I moved with a certain impatience.
"Bills," said Frisby, "give spice an' variety to Nature. They break the monotony of the everlastin' green and what-you-may-call-its."
I glared at him.