Adventure, February 1917 — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

56 ‘Now the Indian pith helmet, especially if worn with a pugaree, proclaims a stranger. in Papua, where almost every one uses the. colonial soft felt hat. Murua felt sure this was some one she had not seen before. “What can he want?” she breathed, sensing some mystery afoot. . ‘‘After you with the glasses,” said a musi- cal voice at her elbow. Murua jumped. “Harold Page, you are perniciously ubi- quitous,” she said. “There are the glasses. If you knew how like a not-enough-poached egg you look at this minute, you would never wear yellow pajamas again.” “Now that shows what different tastes we have, for I think you look rather well in a wrapper,” replied Harold, unperturbed. “You should not allow yourself to see it,”’ said Murua severely. ‘Well, if I didn’t see it, you know, it would be worse,” replied Harold, screwing at the glasses. “T don’t care to bandy words with a bloated canary,”’ Murua answered scorn- fully, retreating from the battle-ground.: “Do you know, that sounds next door to swearing,” said Harold. morning.” ‘Who is it?” asked Murua, putting her small sharp face and cloud of hair round the corner of the door. “How should I know? ““Ask me no more; the moon may draw the sea, But O, too fond, when have I answered thee? Ask me no more,’ : warbled Harold softly. == “That is the limit,”’ came in an angry whisper from Murua’s room. “F ond of “T sometimes think you must cA or you ~ wouldn’t scold so much,” remarked Harold with a shrewdness beyond his years, as he shut up the glass and went back to his room again, neither whistling nor humming nor singing—an abstention that would have suggested to any keen observer that some- thing out of the common was holding his mind. How much or how little truth there may have been in his lightly thrown-out words, was one of the things that were not to mat- ter in the future. If any careless tendril of a young girl’s straying emotions had been — caught, unknown to herself, by the beauty of the one thing beautiful he possessed, it was to hold but a very little while. 5 “Those people have gone in; they aren’t coming up till. Adventure ‘Murua lay down again, quite aware that she would sleep no more that night, and waited for the two hours before daylight to be’ over. As soon as the first gossiping chuckle of pigeons, and raucous cry of par- rots from the woods, announced the com- ing light, she was up ‘and making ready. Her khaki clothes lay ready on a chair, with the pistol belt on. top. She looked at them, and then went to®%#e curtained row of hooks where Edith’s green. muslin hung. “One may have a neat pair of legs for private publication,” she thought, “but that is no reason why a girl should fl rish them in the face of all the outer world,’ She dressed in the muslin, tied the green- and-silver ribbon in the mass of her hair, and took a good look at herself in Edith’s big glass. = I’m not pretty, [’m an excellent sub- stitute,” she said with satisfaction. There was some one coming up the gravel path. Murua shook out her skirts. “Quite prepared to meet the King, or the Bishop of Carpentaria,” she said to herself, IT WAS not a king, or a bishop, who came smartly to the veranda steps and mounted them like a bird hopping up a twig. It was a man of about forty years of age, rather gray, and so sharp and keen-looking of face and even form that he looked, thought Murua, as if you’d only to get him pageMays in order to slice bread with him. He had a red-brown ian: and a pair of : eyes so blue that they seemed to shout at you. His.mouth was set in a tight line, and his nose jutted like the ram of a battleship. Over every line of him was written his pro- fession; it did not need the card he present- ed to Murua, i in the absence of any visible servant, to announce him naval officer. The name on the card was “Commander Christopher Campbell.” “Can I see Mr. Slade?” asked Command- er Christopher Campbell briskly. © “Tm Sorry, but he has gone to Jamieson Island,” replied Murua. 3 "Mrs, Slade, theni?’’ = * “She has gone, too, to look for him.” “Hullo! Was he lost?” “‘Won’t you come up on the veranda? The sun’s getting quite. hot.. Yes, he was lost; he’s lost still, and ’mmot quite sure she isn’t. She went after him ten days ago, > MIG - (E(0) JOO S $i ee S|