“Of course!” she said with a little sigh, and rose. “I see you are going to be very domineering, the way you were yesterday.”

“I?  Domineering?”

“Weren’t you?” she demanded, looking at him from beneath long lashes.

“I’m sure I didn’t intend—­” He stopped for she was laughing at him.  They went on and her mood continued to puzzle him.  Never had he seen her so blithe, so gay.  She waved her hand back at the woodland spot.  “Good-by,” she said.

Then they came upon the little town suddenly—­so suddenly that both appeared bewildered.  Only a hillock had separated them from the sight of it the night before.  They looked and looked.  It lay beneath an upward sweep of land, in a cosy indenture of a great circle that swept far around and away, fringed with cocoanut trees.  Small wisps or corkscrews of smoke defiled the blue of the sky; a wharf, with a steamer at the end, obtruded abruptly upon the curve of the shore.  Mr. Heatherbloom regarded the boat—­a link from Arcadia to the mundane world.  He should have been glad but he didn’t seem overwhelmed at the sight; he stood very still.  He hardly felt her hand on his sleeve; the girl’s eyes were full of sparkles.

“What luck!” he said at length, his voice low and somewhat more formal.

“Isn’t it?” she answered.  And drawing in her breath—­“I can scarcely, believe it.”

“It’s there all right.”  He spoke slowly.  “Come.”  And they went down.  A colored worker in the fields stared at them, but Betty nodded gaily, and asked what town it was and the name of the island.  He told them, growing wonderment in his gaze.  How could they be here and not know that; where had they come from?  To him they were as mysterious as two visitants from Mars.  Regardless of the effect they produced on the dusky toiler they walked on.  The island proved to be larger than they had thought and commercially important.  They had, the day before, but crossed a neck of it.

Soon now they reached the verge of the town and stood on its main artery of traffic; the cobblestone pavement resounded with the rattling of carts and rough native vehicles.  At a curb stood a dilapidated public conveyance to which was attached a horse of harmoniously antique aspect.  Miss Dalrymple got in and Mr. Heatherbloom took his place at her side.

“The cable office,” said the girl briefly, whereupon a lad of mixed ancestry began to whack energetically the protuberant ribs of the drowsy steed.  It woke him and they clattered down the narrow way.  Mr. Heatherbloom leaned back, his gaze straight ahead, but Betty Dalrymple looked around with interest at the people of divers shades and hues, and, for the most part, in costumes of varying degrees of picturesque originality.  After having narrowly escaped running over a small proportion of the juvenile colored population overflowing from odd little shops and houses, they reached the transportable zinc shed that served as a cable office.  Here Miss Dalrymple indited rapidly a most voluminous message, paid the clerk in a businesslike manner, and, unmindful of his amazed expression as he read what she had written, tranquilly re-entered the carriage.