Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/292

280 "If you won't tell me where he is, tell me what he said—about me, I mean."

"Well, it wasn't exactly American Beauty bouquets he handed you."

"You came in that yacht?"

"Sure."

"It looks like the Huntingtons' Aileen." The stranger started at this, tapped her slipper with the rhine-stone buckles and stilted heels, and answered evasively

"Oh, steam yachts all look alike, same's chorus men."

"But whatever are you doing here?"

"Lookin' for gold—can ya beat it?"

"Gold! You too!"

"Surest thing you know. You're not one of those crazy nuts that believe there s gold on this phony island, are you?"

A nut! Why couldn't the girl use regular English! As she talked on, she shifted her poses restlessly, and used hands and quick wrist motions to illustrate and emphasize her statements. Sally decided her eyes showed cunning—perhaps even avarice, but she had an infectious good humour. And she certainly was a smashing beauty in spite of the flaws.

"My gen'leman friends on the yacht swallowed some yarn about treasure on the place," Carlotta rattled on. "Now my own little idea is that you don't turn up gold with a spade, but you get it by darn hard work. I know I've worked hard enough for all I got—until this fool trip—though you couldn't tell that to the boobs that come to see me at Standish's. They don't think I'm straight either," she added defi-