Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/23

Rh "It's prettier than any play or Heaven"

"Yes"

"And there are royal palms"

"Yes"

"And wonderful shells and—oh, Ben, don't be mean, please."

"And sands as pink as coral," he started flood-tide to appease her, "and tangled forests full of birds that squawk horribly yet have the most scrumptious feathers—classier colours than any of the summer boarders sport. And the ocean is deep but clear as a spring, and in it are fish so queer they look like little jokes of God."

"That's it, Ben, the way you used to tell it! But does it seem real? Isn't it all like a dream?"

He thought a moment, his eyes many leagues south. But they had taken her with him, the black, star-pointers for the blue, the small hand resting in the big as on a trusty tiller.

"It does seem too pretty to be real, but it's real enough—the storms are anyway, and the fevers. When you go there, you're in another world as beautiful as Heaven. You come back home, and it seems far away—then you'd swear it was all a dream. You see it's pretty here but—like life." They had turned and were gazing down the hill over the sloping roofs which descended, each like the step in a staircase, to the sea.

"Look at the Light, now, and the harbour. You can put your finger on everything—pick it all out like a geometry problem. Down there it's just as clear, but it's kind of—," he groped for the word, "vague—so rich with the perfumes,