For the moment Florence could not be roused from her dreamy stupor. Never had she worked so hard as on these days of the great Fair. Never had life seemed so full of joy. Jeanne was with her once more; a whole half year the French girl had been in her native land. Now she was back. There was, too, a spirit of glorious madness about this great exhibition, that somehow entered into her very soul. Cars packed with screaming visitors rocketing across the sky, airplanes drumming and dipping, speed boats thundering down the lagoon; speed, light, joy—who could resist it all?
But when day was done, the throngs departed, it was good to pick up a few broken bits of wood, kindle a small fire here on the beach and play the vagabond through one wee hour of the night. To sip black tea, to stare at the fire, to dream—who could ask for more? And yet here was Petite Jeanne insisting that she “only look.” Look at what?
Ah, well, Jeanne had not worked that day. She had no need to work. She was rich. Fortune had overtaken her at last—given her a chateau in France and much else.
“Jeanne,” she grumbled like some good-natured bear, “you have been curled up among the pillows all day, petting the cat. And now you ask me to look, to think—I, who have done nothing all day but lead children in play, march them up the magic mountain and down again, lift them on the little train and off again, follow them on—”
“Stop!” Jeanne stamped her pretty foot. “It is enough. I would not say ‘Look’ but it is yours, yours and mine, this curious dagger. You must tell me what it is. Only see! It has three blades!”
“Dagger! Three blades!” Florence found herself at last.
“Yes, yes! Three blades! A very strange dagger!”
The thing Florence took from Jeanne’s hand was indeed a curious affair. A knife with a hilt of ordinary length, it had not one blade, but three, extending in triangular formation, ten inches from the hilt.
“That,” Florence declared emphatically, “is something!”
“And see the handle!” Jeanne was her old enthusiastic self. “See how it shines in the light! Jewels, some red, some white—”