Florence, accustomed to all this from the past, sat looking on in silence. Greta too was silent. Yet how strange it all seemed to her!
“Bravo!” Bihari shouted when the dance was over. “We will visit the island. We will go to every place where there are people. They shall have music and dancing, such entertainment as they have never known before.”
The days that followed were one round of joy for the little French girl. The old wreck became once more a pleasure ship. Flags and bunting were hung on every brace and spar. The deserted cabins overflowed with life and echoed sounds of joy from dawn to dark.
Great flat boxes of clay were brought from the mainland. On these campfires were kindled. Their red and yellow gleam might be seen wavering upon the water far and near. Strange dishes were prepared in kettles hung over these fires. They feasted, danced, sang and told stories by the hour. Both Jeanne and Florence lived the life of the open as they had lived it in France with Bihari and his band.
As for the dark-eyed Greta, it was all so wild and strange she could only sit shyly smiling in a corner, both charmed and bewildered by the ways of these people of the open road.
At times she stole away to the prow. One night, when songs were loudest, she took her violin from beneath her arm and played to the rushing waves. Then again she would sit staring away toward the land where no light shone, dreaming strange dreams.
“Gold,” she would murmur, “a barrel of gold. Florence said there might be a barrel of gold buried on the camping ground.
“But that,” she would exclaim, “that is absurd!” In spite of all her denials, the conviction clung to her that somehow, somewhere a barrel of gold would play an important part in her life.
“Wonder how much that would be?” she murmured. “Enough for—for everything?” For a long time she had wished to study violin under a very great master, and had not been able.
“Money, money, money,” she whispered now. “Some have much more than they need, and some none at all. How strange life is!”