And we all laughed, and fell to eating. We opened the clams with our fingers, and took the clam by the head, and gave him a swirl in the saucer of melted butter, and threw our heads back, and took his body into our mouths, and bit him off and cast the head aside, and took the next one. All there had had much experience in the process, and the clams that had seemed enough for a regiment were soon eaten, and there was a prodigious pile of shells under the table so that one could not move his feet without rattling. And the lobsters were gone, and the chickens, and most of the fish, and much of the brown bread. And first one sat back with a sigh, and smiled, and then another; and at last all were sitting, smiling at nothing and doing nothing else—all but Bobby and Olivia. Bobby, it is true, had a smile graven upon his face, but it was a smile of the face and not of the heart; and Olivia seemed out of sorts and did not take the trouble to smile at all. And the bake was but an empty wreck. Then Eve rose quietly, and they all got themselves slowly upon their feet, and began to drift about the bluff.
My place is not very big, only the clipped lawn in front of the house, and about an acre on the south side ending in the bluff, and a couple of acres to the north, where lies my garden and the rest a hayfield. I should have ploughed up that hayfield and put it into potatoes if I could have found anybody to do the ploughing. But it is just as well as a hayfield. Everybody has been planting potatoes this year. I almost expect to see the gutters sprouting potatoes as I ride along with Old Goodwin in his car. Potatoes will be cheap next winter. And if I had ploughed up that field it would have been even less inviting for our guests to wander over.
Not that any of them showed any disposition to wander over it. The older ones seemed well content to settle down again under my pine, Bobby was mooning alone at the edge of the bluff, Elizabeth was standing talking with Jimmy Wales, and Jack Ogilvie was trying to persuade Olivia to walk to a little clump of trees. I had seen Eve showing him the clump of trees earlier in the day. At last they did walk off toward the trees, Olivia obviously discontented and watching Bobby out of the corner of her eye.
I drifted toward Eve, and she drifted toward me, and we came together, which might be reprehensible but was not strange. We generally do come together. She was clad all in light, filmy white, with two red roses at her bosom, and her hair a glory. And her eyes—there are no other such eyes as hers.
"Eve," I whispered, "do you want to be disgraced? How can you expect anything else when you dress as you did for that other clambake that I remember, and your eyes smiling, and that light upon your hair?"
It was more than her eyes that smiled as she looked at me.
"Yes," she whispered in return. "I want to be. Shan't I show you our clump of trees?" She laughed as she finished.
I hesitated. "But Ogilvie—and Olivia."
"Stupid!" she said. "I did not show him every nook. Come!"
So we wandered about, but we brought up at a secluded nook in our clump, and Eve held up her face to mine. But when I had done it she put her finger on my lips and listened.