Quick Action Part 6

"Yes." He mentioned the year.

"Not crew?"

"No."

"Baseball?"

"'Varsity pitcher," he nodded, surprised.

"Then this is the third time I've seen you.... I wonder what it is about you----" She remained silent, watching him burying her water bottles in the cool marl.

When all was in order, he smiled, made her a little formal bow, and evinced a disposition to retire and leave her in possession.

"I thought we were going to work at once!" she said uneasily. "I am quite ready." And, as he did not seem to comprehend, "I was going to help you to examine the little caterpillars, one by one; and the minute I saw anything trying to bite them I was going to call you. Didn't you understand?" she added wistfully.

"That will be fine!" he said, with an enthusiasm very poorly controlled.

"You will show me where the little creatures are hiding, won't you?"

"Indeed I will! Here they are, all about us!" He made a sweeping gesture over the low undergrowth of scrub-palmetto; and the next moment:

"I see them!" she exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, what funny, scrubby, busy little creatures! They are everywhere--_everywhere_! Why, there seem to be thousands and thousands of them! And all are eating the tiny green bunches of fruit!"

They bent together over a group of feeding larvae; he handed her a pocket microscope like his own; and, enchanted, she studied the tiny things while he briefly described their various stages of development from the little eggs to the pretty, pearl-tinted moth so charmingly striped with delicate, brown lines--a rare prize in the cabinet of any collector.

V

Through the golden forest light of afternoon, they moved from shrub to shrub; and he taught her to be on the watch for any possible foes of the neat and busy little caterpillars, warning her to watch for birds, spiders, beetles, ichneumon flies, possibly squirrels or even hornets.

She nodded her comprehension; he went one way, she the other. For nearly ten minutes they remained separated, and it seemed ages to one of them anyway.

But the caterpillars appeared to be immune. Nothing whatever interfered with them; wandering beetles left them unmolested; no birds even noticed them; no gauzy-winged and parasitic flies investigated them.

"Mr. Jones!" she called.

He was at her side in an instant.

"I only wanted to know where you were," she said happily.

The sun hung red over the lagoon when they sauntered back to camp. She went into her tent with a cheerful nod to him, which said:

"I've had a splendid time, and I'll rejoin you in a few moments."

When she emerged in fresh white flannels, she found him writing in a blank-book.

"I wonder if I might see?" she said. "If it's scientific, I mean."

"It is, entirely."

So she seated herself on the ground beside him, and read over his shoulder the entries he was making in his field book concerning the day's doings. When he had finished his entry, she said:

"You have not mentioned my coming to you, and how we looked for ichneumon flies together."

"I----" He was silent.

She added timidly: "I know I count for absolutely nothing in the important experiences of a naturalist, but--I did look very hard for ichneumon flies. Couldn't you write in your field book that I tried very hard to help you?"

He wrote gravely:

"Miss Ca.s.sillis most generously volunteered her invaluable aid, and spared no effort to discover any possible foe that might prove to be parasitic upon these larvae. But so far without success."

"Thank you," she said, in a very low voice. And after a short silence: "It was not mere vanity, Mr. Jones. Do you understand?"

"I know it was not vanity, even if I do not entirely understand."

"Shall I tell you?"

"Please."

"It was the first thing that I have ever been permitted to do all by myself. It meant so much to me.... And I wished to have a little record of it--even if you think it is of no scientific importance."

"It is of more importance than----" But he managed to stop himself, slightly startled. She had lifted her head from the pages of the field book to look at him. When his voice failed, and while the red burned brilliantly in his ears, she resumed her perusal of his journal, gravely. After a while, though she turned the pages as if she were really reading, he concluded that her mind was elsewhere. It was.

Presently he rose, mended the fire, filled the kettle, and unhooked the brace of wild ducks from the eaves where they swung, and marched off with them toward the water.

When he returned, the ducks were plucked and split for broiling. He found her seated as he had left her, dreaming awake, idle hands folded on the pages of his open field book.

For dinner they had broiled mallard, coffee, ash-cakes, and bon-bons.

After it she smoked a cigarette with him.

Later she informed him that it was her first, and that she liked it, and requested another.

"Don't," he said, smiling.

"Why?"

"It spoils a girl's voice, ultimately."

"But it's very agreeable."

"Will you promise not to?" he asked, lightly.

Suddenly her blue eyes became serious.

"Yes," she said, "if you wish."