For a second their hands met Then, as a swirling eddy set the boat whirling, the girl seized a paddle.
“You see,” she said quietly as they reached more placid water, “we didn’t tell you while you were ill; afraid it would disturb you.”
“It would have,” said Johnny. Quite suddenly something had come to him. “The red lure!” he murmured, quite unconscious of the fact that he spoke out loud. “When will I ever get back to it?”
“What is the red lure?” the girl asked in surprise.
“The red lure? Why, that’s my pet name for mahogany, the prince of priceless woods. If you’ve ever seen the mirror-like gleam of its polished surface, if you’ve seen how like a fire on the hearth at sunset it is, you know what it means.”
“I have. I do,” she said simply.
“Well,” he went on, “I’ve been given an opportunity to bring down a sample, one boom full, a hundred thousand feet or so of that matchless wood from a forest the value of which can scarcely be estimated. I had made a fine start, too, when I was suddenly driven into the bush. I promptly got myself lost, and here I am.”
Reading intense interest in her eyes, he told her the whole story of his adventure thus far.
“And now,” he ended with an uncertain smile, “it seems that we—you, your brother and I—are all babes in the woods, so to speak.”
“Perhaps it’s not quite as bad as that,” said Jean. “Bad enough, though. You see, I’ve always lived in the tropics with my father. He brought me here when I was five. My brother, who is three years older, was left behind in England.