Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/32

20 "With elderberry pie on the side!"

"Ris'n biscuit, you mean!"

It was evidently an old game and a very childish one for two old salts who had outridden nor'-easters and rounded the Horn, but Sally smiled on them quite maternally again as she fixed the backgammon board across her father's lap and adjusted the hassock under his tender foot.

They were shuffling the cards when Captain Harve called through the window—

"Ho, Sally, if it's 'Floating' Island,' use the big bowl, and I'll tell you about some I sighted, tonight."

At the naïve pun the girl smiled, then frowned meditatively.

"Ben with his vanishing islands, and Uncle Harve with his that float!" She sighed and went over to the table where stood the delectable dish.

Wonderingly, yet wondering why she wondered, she bent over the blue bowl. It rimmed a creamy, yellow sea, and in it floated seven tiny islands, all snowy-white and delicately peaked and whorled.

An enchanted region—uncharted seas—and her own horizon had been so limited. It wasn't that the sound little cells of her perfectly-functioning system clamoured to react to the titillating shocks of city-life. Her routine was varied enough. Never had she tucked a yellow pay-envelope into the treasure cave of her blouse, but many times over she had earned it. And technique it does need to run a home on the neatly-spliced ends of a captain's pension, and as much subtle strategy to take dictation from a testy old man as