“Oh, it’s coming along all right,” Frank said.

“It’s surprising how quickly and how correctly they’re getting the language.”

“I’m going to begin reading aloud to them next week,” Pete announced.  “That’ll be a picnic.”

“It’s been a long fight,” Ralph said contentedly.  “But we’ve won out.  We’ve got them going.  I knew we would.”  His eyes went to Peachy’s face, but once there, their look of triumph melted to tenderness.

“What are we going to read them?” Honey asked idly.  He did not really listen to Pete’s answer.  His eyes, sparkling with amusement, had gone back to Lulu, who still sat seriously practising her lesson.  Red lips, little white teeth, slender pink tongue seemed to get into an inextricable tangle over the simple monosyllables.

“Leave that to me!” Pete was saying mysteriously.  “I’ll have them reading and writing by the end of another two months.”

“It’s curious how long it’s taken them to get over that terror of us,” said Billy.  “I cannot understand it.”

“Oh, they’ll explain why they’ve been so afraid,” said Frank, “as soon as they’ve got enough vocabulary.  We cannot know, until they tell us how many of their conventions we have broken, how brutal we may have seemed.”

“And yet,” Billy went on, “I should think they’d see that we wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t for their own good.  Well, just as soon as I can put it over with them, I’m going to give them a long spiel on the gentleman’s code.  I don’t believe they’ll ever be frightened of us again.  Hello!”

Lulu had tottered over to their group, supporting herself by the ledge of rock.  She pulled herself upright, balancing precariously.  She put her sharp little teeth close, parted her lips and produced: 

“K-K-K-K-K-K-Kiss-S-S-S-S-S-S Me!”

The men burst into roars of laughter.  Lulu looked from one face to the other in perplexity.  In perplexity, the other women looked from her to them and at each other.

“Sounds like the Yale yell!” Pete commented.

“But what I can’t understand,” Billy said, reverting to his thesis, “is that they don’t realize instantly that we wouldn’t hurt them for any thing — that that’s a thing a fellow couldn’t do.”

C.

Twilight on Angel Island.

The stars were beginning to shoot tiny white, five-pointed flames through the purple sky.  The fireflies were beginning to cut long arcs of gold in the sooty dusk.  The waves were coming up the low-tide beach with a long roar and retreating with a faint hiss.  Afterwards floated on the air the music of the shingle, hundreds of pebbles pattering with liquid footsteps down the sand.  Peals of laughter, the continuous bass roar of the men, an occasional uncertain soprano lilting of the women, came from the group.  The girls were reciting their lessons.

“Three little girls from school are we,
Pert as schoolgirls well can be,
Filled to the brim with girlish glee,
Three little maids from school!”