"Ho, ho!" she warbles merry. "Gold and jewels! The jewels of old Spain and of the days of Louis Fourteenth. Pirate gold! We've dug it! The very thing I've always wanted to do ever since I was a little girl. Ho, ho!"
"And I rather guess," adds Old Hickory, fishin' a broken cigar out of his vest pocket, "that as treasure hunters we're not such thundering jokes, after all. Eh?"
And say, when Old Hickory starts crowin' you can know he sees clear through to daylight. I looks over my shoulder just then, and, sure enough, it's beginnin' to pink up in the east.
"My dope is," says I, "that it's goin' to be a large, wide day. Anyhow, it opens well."
CHAPTER XVI
TORCHY TAKES A RUNNING JUMP
Course, it don't sound natural. A merry sunrise party is an event that ain't often listed on the cards, unless it's a continuous session from the evenin' before. But this wasn't a case of a bunch of night-bloomin' gladiolas who'd lasted through. Hardly. Although Auntie does have something of a look like the parties you see lined up at Yorkville Court, charged with havin' been rude to taxi drivers; and Mr. Ellins might have been passin' the night on a bakery gratin' with a sportin' extra for a blanket.
We was a long, long ways from either taxis or traffic cops, though. We was on Nunca Secos Key, with the Gulf of Mexico murmurin' gentle behind us, and out in front a big red sun was blazin' through the black pines that edge the west coast of Florida. Five of us, includin' Vee and Captain Rupert Killam and me; and each in our own peculiar way was registerin' the Pollyanna-Mrs. Wiggs stuff.
Why not? For one thing, it's about as handsome a December mornin' as you could dream of—the air soft and mild, with a clean, salty smell to it that sort of gives you a romantic hunch every sniff you pump in.