“She needn’t,” I thought, “try to put the comether on me.” Suspenders are in the way when swimming, and my heavy, rubber-soled shoes helped to spoil my temper.
“Of course,” I gloomily returned, “our lunch is now at the bottom of the Sound.” I knew that would fetch her. I have never seen a woman who has so retained a child’s unimpaired appetite. Mrs. Massingbyrd turned an uneasy eye on the catboat, which, buoyed by its sail, was floating on its side like some great, awkward, wounded bird.
Mrs. Massingbyrd’s feet struck the sandy beach off Huckleberry Island.
“But we can’t sit here all day, you know, on a desert island, with nothing to eat,” she remonstrated, as she made her way to the shore. “You must do something about it, Bobby. I call it tragic, simply tragic, to think of all that good lunch put out of our reach.”
She was by now quite on dry land, and with great expedition pulled the shell pins from her lovely and extraordinary hair.
The jealous say that Mrs. Massingbyrd’s strength, like Samson’s, rests in her hair. It is that meek, silvery gold color that usually has neither kink nor curl, but in her case it curled riotously, broke out at the nape of her neck in absurd babyish ringlets and at her temples.
“So that was why you upset us?” I asked, irritably. “I would have taken your word for it that it did.”
“Did what?” she queried, rising promptly to the bait.
“Come down to your knees, I mean.”