Angel Island Part 27

"Come, Angela!" Peachy called. "Come, baby!"

Angela started to spread her pinions. "Don't fly, baby," Peachy called.

"Walk!"

Obediently, Angela dropped her wings, sank. Her feet, sh.e.l.l-like, pinky-soft, padded the ground. She tried to balance, but she swayed and fell.

"No matter, darling!" Peachy called cheerily, "Try again!"

Angela heroically pulled herself up. She made a few uncertain steps, but she stumbled with every move.

Honey-Boy and Peterkin came running up to her side; Junior, grinning happily, waddled behind a long way in the rear. "Angela's trying to walk!" the boys cried. "Angela's trying to walk!" They capered with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Oh, isn't she funny? Look at the girl trying to walk!"

The tears spurted from Angela's eyes. Her lips quivered. Her wings shot up straight.

"Don't mind what the boys say, Angela!" Peachy called. "Put your wings down! Keep right on walking!"

Again Angela's pinions dropped. Again she took a few steps. This time she fell to her knees. But she pulled herself up, sped onward, fell again, and again. She had reached the stones that bounded the sand. When she arose this last time, her foot was, bleeding.

"Keep on walking, baby!" Peachy commanded inflexibly. But there was a rain of tears on her check.

Angela staggered forward a rod or two; and now both feet left a trail of blood. Then suddenly again she struggled for balance, fell headlong.

"Keep on walking, mother's heart's treasure," Peachy commanded.

She dropped to her knees and held out her arms; her face worked uncontrollably.

Angela pulled herself up with a determined settling of her little rose-petal mouth. Swaying, stumbling, staggering, she ran on in one final spurt until she collapsed in her mother's arms.

VIII

"And as soon as we finish the New Camp," Honey said eagerly, "we must make another on the rocks at the north. That will be our summer place."

"And as soon as we've finished that, let's build a house-boat for the lake," Billy suggested.

"Then let's put up some hunting-boxes at the south," Ralph took it up.

"There's a good year's work on the New Camp," Frank reminded them.

"But after the New Camp and the Hunting-Boxes and the House-Boat--what?"

Ralph asked a little drearily.

"Plenty to do," Billy promised cheerily. "I've been working on a plan to lay out the entire island in camps and parks. Pete, I want to bring them over to you some night."

"Come to-night," Pete said eagerly.

"Why not bring them to the Clubhouse," Honey asked. "I'd like to see them, too. While I'm working with my hands on one job, I like to be working with my head on the next."

"Sure," agreed Ralph, "I'm for that. I'll join you to-night. Can you come, Frank?"

"I had meant to write to-night," Frank said. "But of course I can put that off."

"Has it ever occurred to you fellows," Billy asked, "that just as soon as the boys are big enough for us to leave the women in their care, we can build a boat and visit the other four islands?"

"Gee!" Honey said. "Now you're shouting. I never thought of that. Lord, how I would like to get away from this place for a while. Being shut in in any way always gets on my nerves."

Ralph drew a long breath. "I never thought of it," he admitted. "But it gives me a new lease of life."

"I shall feel like Columbus," Pete acknowledged, "and then some. Why it's like visiting the moon--or Mars. And G.o.d knows we'll need an other island or two in our business--provided we stay here for two or three generations more. We'll be a densely populated world-center before we know it."

"I was thinking," Billy suddenly relapsed to the previous subject. "How about the women tonight? They always hate to have us leave them when we've been away all day,--and we've been here two days, remember."

"Oh, that's all right," Honey answered. "I'm sure Lulu'll be all right.

There's been the greatest change in her in the last few months."

"Peachy won't mind," said Ralph. "She told me the other night to go to the Clubhouse as often as I wanted and stay as late."

"Clara says practically the same." Pete wrinkled his forehead in perplexity. "It took my breath away. How do you account for it?"

"Oh, that's all right," Honey answered, stopping to dash the sweat from his forehead, "I should say it was just a matter of their getting over their foolishness. I suppose all young married women have it--that instinct to monopolize their husbands. And when you think it over, we do sort of give them the impression while we're courting them that they are the whole cheese. But that isn't all. They've come to their senses on some other matters. I think, for instance, they're beginning to get our point of view on this flying proposition. Lulu hasn't hinted that she'd like to fly for three months. She's never been so contented since, we captured them. To do her justice, though, she always saw, when I pointed it out to her, that flying was foolish, besides being dangerous."

"Well," Ralph said, "what between holding them down from the clouds and keeping them away from the New Camp, managing them has been some job.

But I guess you're right, Honey. I think they're reconciled now to their lot. If I do say it as shouldn't, Peachy seems like a regular woman nowadays. She's braced up in fine style in the last two months. Her color is much better; her spirits are high. When I get home at night, she doesn't want to go out at all. If I say that I'm going to the Clubhouse, she never raises a yip. In fact, she seems too tired to care.

She's always ready now to turn in when I do. For months and months, you know, she sat up reading until all hours of the night and morning. But now she falls asleep like a child."

"Then she's gotten over that insomnia?" Pete asked this casually and he did not look at Ralph.

"Entirely," Ralph replied briefly, and in his turn he did not look at Pete. "She's a perfectly healthy woman now. She gets her three squares every day and her twelve hours every night--regular. I never saw such an improvement in a woman."

"Well, when it comes to sleeping," Pete said, "I don't believe she's got anything on Clara. I often find her dead to the world when I get home at night. I jolly her about that--for she has always thought going to bed early indicated lack of temperament. And as for teasing to be allowed to fly, or to be taken out swimming, or to call on any of you, or to let her tag me here--why, that's all stopped short. She keeps dozing off all the evening. Sometimes in the midst of a sentence, she'll begin to nod.

Never saw her looking so well, though."

"Chiquita, on the contrary, isn't sleeping as much as she did," Frank said. "She's more active, though--physically, I mean. She's rejoicing at present over the fact that she's lost twenty-five, pounds in the last three months. She said last night that she hadn't been so slim since she was a girl."

"Twenty-five pounds!" exclaimed Honey. "That's a good deal to lose. How the h.e.l.l--how do you explain it!"

"Increased household activity," Frank replied vaguely. "And then mentally, I think she's more vigorous. She's been reading a great deal by herself. Formerly I found that reading annoyed her--even when I read aloud, explaining carefully as I went along."

"I haven't noticed an increased activity on Julia's part," Billy said thoughtfully. "But she's always been extraordinarily active, considering everything. The way she gets about is marvelous. But of course she's planned the placing of her furniture with that in view. She's as quick as a cat. I have noticed, however, that she seems much happier. They certainly are a changed lot of women."

"The twelve o'clock whistle has just blown," Honey announced. "Let's eat."

The five men dropped their tools. They gathered their lunches together and fell to a voracious feeding. At last, pipes appeared. They stretched themselves to the smoker's ease. For a while, the silence was unbroken.

Then, here and there, somebody dropped an irrelevant remark. n.o.body answered it.

They lay in one corner of the big s.p.a.ce which had been cleared from the jungle chaos. On one side rippled the blue lake carving into many tiny bays and inlets and padded with great green oases of matted lily-leaves.