Page:The house without a key, by Earl Derr Biggins (1925).djvu/19

 “I hope not,” Miss Minerva said.

“It saps the life right out of me nowadays,” he told her, and sank into a chair. “That about being young, Minerva—it’s a little bluff I’m fond of.”

She smiled gently. “Even youth finds the Kona hard to endure,” she comforted. “I remember when I was here before—in the eighties. I was only nineteen, but the memory of the sick wind lingers still.”

“I missed you then, Minerva.”

“Yes. You were off somewhere in the South Seas.”

“But I heard about you when I came back. That you were tall and blonde and lovely, and nowhere near so prim as they feared you were going to be. A wonderful figure, they said—but you’ve got that yet.”

She flushed, but smiled still, “Hush, Dan. We don’t talk that way where I come from.”

“The ’eighties,” he sighed. “Hawaii was Hawaii then. Unspoiled, a land of opera bouffe, with old Kalakaua sitting on his golden throne.”

“I remember him,” Miss Minerva said. “Grand parties at the palace. And the afternoons when he sat with his disreputable friends on the royal lanai, and the Royal Hawaiian Band played at his feet, and he haughtily tossed them royal pennies. It was such a colorful, naive spot then, Dan.”

“It’s been ruined,” he complained sadly. “Too much aping of the mainland. Too much of your damned mechanical civilization—automobiles, phonographs, radios—bah! And yet—and yet, Minerva—away down underneath there are deep dark waters flowing still.”

She nodded, and they sat for a moment busy with their memories. Presently Dan Winterslip snapped on a small reading light at his side. “I’ll just glance at the evening paper, if you don’t mind.”