On the veranda that afternoon he broached the proposition of a chaperone as delicately as he could, explaining the necessity at Berande for such a body, a housekeeper to run the boys and the storeroom, and perform divers other useful functions.  When he had finished, he waited anxiously for what Joan would say.

“Then you don’t like the way I’ve been managing the house?” was her first objection.  And next, brushing his attempted explanations aside, “One of two things would happen.  Either I should cancel our partnership agreement and go away, leaving you to get another chaperone to chaperone your chaperone; or else I’d take the old hen out in the whale-boat and drown her.  Do you imagine for one moment that I sailed my schooner down here to this raw edge of the earth in order to put myself under a chaperone?”

“But really . . . er . . . you know a chaperone is a necessary evil,” he objected.

“We’ve got along very nicely so far without one.  Did I have one on the Miele?  And yet I was the only woman on board.  There are only three things I am afraid of—­bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones.  Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin—­yes, causing sin—­by their diseased imaginings.”

“Phew!” Sheldon leaned back from the table in mock fear.

“You needn’t worry about your bread and butter,” he ventured.  “If you fail at planting, you would be sure to succeed as a writer—­novels with a purpose, you know.”

“I didn’t think there were persons in the Solomons who needed such books,” she retaliated.  “But you are certainly one—­you and your custodians of virtue.”

He winced, but Joan rattled on with the platitudinous originality of youth.

“As if anything good were worth while when it has to be guarded and put in leg-irons and handcuffs in order to keep it good.  Your desire for a chaperone as much as implies that I am that sort of creature.  I prefer to be good because it is good to be good, rather than because I can’t be bad because some argus-eyed old frump won’t let me have a chance to be bad.”

“But it—­it is not that,” he put in.  “It is what others will think.”

“Let them think, the nasty-minded wretches!  It is because men like you are afraid of the nasty-minded that you allow their opinions to rule you.”

“I am afraid you are a female Shelley,” he replied; “and as such, you really drive me to become your partner in order to protect you.”

“If you take me as a partner in order to protect me . . .  I . . .  I shan’t be your partner, that’s all.  You’ll drive me into buying Pari-Sulay yet.”

“All the more reason—­” he attempted.

“Do you know what I’ll do?” she demanded.  “I’ll find some man in the Solomons who won’t want to protect me.”

Sheldon could not conceal the shock her words gave him.