“But you!” she exclaimed, “You are my friend of many, many days. It is in the lines of our hands, it is written in the stars, that we shall be together. Always and always!” Her voice rose.
“All—all right,” Florence surrendered. “Have you any clothes?”
“But yes!” the little French girl exclaimed, “I am prepared. In my locker are slacks of midnight blue. And my blouses, they are orange. Like a flame of fire are these.”
“Like a flame,” Florence laughed. “All too soon they will be like smoke. Look!” Springing to her feet, she pointed down the bay, “See! There is your flame!”
At that moment the red threat against the sky flared anew. Jeanne shuddered. As for Florence, she was thinking of the boys back there fighting the flames in the night, thinking, too, of the gay party on the rich man’s yacht, of young men in white flannels and girls in evening gowns. Then, down deep in her heart, a great wonder possessed her.
Of a sudden her thoughts were brought back to her immediate surroundings. Bobbing up and down in the low bushes beneath the rock some creature came racing toward them.
“Wha-what on earth is that?” Florence exclaimed.
“Oh! that’s Plumdum,” Jeanne cried. Sliding off the rocks, she gathered some wriggling, woolly creature in her arms.
“We don’t let him out when I dance. He wants to dance and doesn’t know how.”
“But Plumdum?” Florence exclaimed. “What is he?”