Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/15

 passing touched lightly the black wisp that lay on Eddie's arm. The wrap stirred languidly, a trifle impatiently, and slipped from Eddie's disinterested hold. It lay on the deck of the Burma, an aromatic heap of silk. A wrap with a Lanvin green lining that was splotchy and torn but still defiantly Lanvin green.

He left it there for a moment; then, regretting the childishness of the deed, flung it carelessly over his arm again.

"Many a stormy wind shall blow . . ."

And now the player of the untuned ukulele was drawing nearer, and Eddie listened to her song with a lazy interest.

"Ere Jack comes home again."

She rounded the corner of the boat and stood not three feet from Eddie Collins. Her voice was young and husky, her mouth wide and red.

"Sailing, sailing—"

The ukulele dropped to her side. She reached into the pocket of her flame-colored sweater and brought forth a chocolate almond.

An older girl, tall, thin, indifferently blonde, with her hair decorously imprisoned beneath a net, came from around the corner as though she had been following gay, fleet steps at a distance and had just caught up.

The two stood together wagering on the endurance of a candy-box cover that leaped the waves happily unconscious of the fate that would soon overtake it. Then the girl with the ukulele saw Eddie, and her breeziness suffered a momentary squelching under his sullen scrutiny. She was resentful of that moment, and her eyes beneath piquantly narrowed brows questioned his right to quench her buoyancy. Then she smiled. At herself, perhaps, for the moment she had stood with her laughter paralyzed