“And yes!” she cried with a fresh shudder. “There is the slim, dark-faced one who is after me. And how can I know why?”
“You poor child!” Florence lifted her from the chair as easily as she might had she been a sack of feathers. “You shall tell me all about it. But first I must make a fire and brew some good black tea. And you must run along and become Petite Jeanne. I am not very fond of this Pierre person.” She plucked at the black coat sleeve. “In fact I never have cared for him at all.”
Half an hour later the two girls were curled up amid a pile of rugs and cushions before the fire. Cups were steaming, the fire crackling and the day, such as it had been, was rapidly passing into the joyous realm of “times that are gone,” where one may live in memories that amuse and thrill, but never cause fear nor pain.
Jeanne had told her story and Florence had done her best to reassure her, when the little French girl exclaimed: “But you, my friend? Only a few hours ago you spoke of a discovery on the island. What was this so wonderful thing you saw there?”
“Well, now,” Florence sat up to prod the fire, “that was the strangest thing! You have been on the island?”
“No, my friend. In the fort, but not on the island.”
“Then you don’t know what sort of half wild place it is. It’s made of the dumping from a great city: cans, broken bricks, clay, everything. And from sand taken from the bottom of the lake. It’s been years in the making. Storms have washed in seeds. Birds have carried in others. Little forests of willow and cottonwood have sprung up. The south end is a jungle. A fit hide-out for tramps, you’d say. All that. You’d not expect to find respectable people living there, would you?”
“But how could they?”
“That’s the queer part. They could. And I’m almost sure they do. Seems too strange to be true.
“And yet—” She prodded the fire, then stared into the flames as if to see reproduced there pictures that had half faded from her memories. “And yet, Petite Jeanne, I saw a girl out there, quite a young girl, in overalls and a bathing-suit. She was like a statue when I first saw her, a living statue. She went in for a dip, then donned her overalls to dash right into the jungle.