"Might be," said Marian. "You don't have to be so careful to whisper though; he doesn't speak our language, it seems, nor any other that I know anything about. Very curious. I tried him out on everything I know."
"Chinese, trying to smuggle in?"
"Maybe."
"He doesn't seem exactly oriental," said Lucile, looking closely at his face.
With his eyes closed as if in sleep, the boy did not, indeed, seem to resemble very closely any of the many types Lucile had chanced to meet. There was something of the clean brown, the perfect curve of the classic young Italian; something of the smoothness of skin native to the Anglo-Saxon, yet there was, too, the round face, the short nose, the slight angle at the eyes which spoke of the oriental.
"He looks like the Eskimos we have on the streets of Nome," suggested
Marian, "only he's too light-complexioned. Couldn't be, anyway."
"Not much likelihood of that," laughed Lucile. "Come two thousand miles in a skin kiak to have his craft wrecked in a calm sea. That couldn't happen."
"Whoever he is, he's a splendid swimmer," commented Marian. "When we reached him he was a mile from any land, with the sea bearing shoreward, and there wasn't a sail or steamer in sight."
The two of them now busied themselves with preparing the evening meal, and for a time forgot their strange, uninvited guest.
When Lucile next looked his way she caught his eyes upon her in a wondering stare. They were at once shifted to the kettle from which there now issued savory odors of boiling fowl.