and an unmistakable odor
of broiled chicken!

"Oh!" she said quickly; and then, "Oh! I thought you were Jenkins."

"Timeo Danaos--what's the rest of it?" I asked, tendering my offering.
"You didn't have any dinner, you know." I sat down beside her. "See,
I'll be the table. What was the old fairy tale? 'Little goat bleat:
little table appear!' I'm perfectly willing to be the goat, too."

She was laughing rather tremulously.

"We never do meet like other people, do we?" she asked. "We really ought
to shake hands and say how are you."

"I don't want to meet you like other people, and I suppose you always
think of me as wearing the other fellow's clothes," I returned meekly.
"I'm doing it again: I don't seem to be able to help it. These are
Granger's that I have on now."

She threw back her head and laughed again, joyously, this time.

"Oh, it's so ridiculous," she said, "and you have never seen me when I
was not eating! It's too prosaic!"

"Which reminds me that the chicken is getting cold, and the ice warm,"
I suggested. "At the time, I thought there could be no place better than
the farmhouse kitchen--but this is. I ordered all this for something I
want to say to you--the sea, the sand, the stars."

"How alliterative you are!" she said, trying to be flippant. "You are
not to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the things are
spilled around!"

But she ate nothing, after all, and pretty soon I put the tray down in
the sand. I said little; there was no hurry. We were together, and time
meant nothing against that age-long wash of the sea. The air blew her
hair in small damp curls against her face, and little by little the tide
retreated, leaving our boat an oasis in a waste of gray sand.

"If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year
Do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get it clear?"

she threw at me once when she must have known I was going to speak. I
held her hand, and as long as I merely held it she let it lie warm in
mine. But when I raised it to my lips, and kissed the soft, open palm,
she drew it away without displeasure.

"Not that, please," she protested, and fell to whistling softly again,
her chin in her hands. "I can't sing," she said, to break an awkward
pause, "and so, when I'm fidgety, or have something on my mind, I
whistle. I hope you don't dislike it?"

"I love it," I asserted warmly. I did; when she pursed her lips like
that I was mad to kiss them