Angela fluttered with baby-violence.  Julia opened her arms.  The child leaped from her lap, started half-running, half-flying, caught a seaward going breeze, sailed to the top of the boulder.  She balanced herself there, gazing triumphantly down on Billy-Boy who, flat on his stomach, red in the face, his black eyes bulging out of his head, still pulled and tugged and strained.

“Honey-Boy’s tried to climb that rock every day for three months,” Lulu boasted proudly.  “He’ll do it some day.  I never saw such persistence.  If he gets a thing into his head, I can’t do anything with him.”

“Angela starts to climb it occasionally,” Peachy said.  “But, of course, I always stop her.  I’m afraid she’ll hurt her feet.”

Above the rock stretched the bough of a big pine.  As she contemplated it, a look of wonder grew in Angela’s eyes, of question, of uncertainty.  Suddenly it became resolution.  She spread her wings, bounded into the air, fluttered upwards, and alighted squarely on the bough.

“Oh, Angela!” Peachy called anxiously.  Then, joyously, “Look at my baby.  She’ll be flying as high as we did in a few years.  Oh, how I love to think of that!”

She laughed in glee — and the others laughed with her.  They continued to watch Angela’s antics, their faces growing more and more gay.  Julia alone did not smile; but she watched the exhibition none the less steadily.

Three years had brought some changes to the women of Angel Island; and for the most part they were devastating changes.  They were still wingless.  They wore long trailing garments that concealed their feet.  These garments differed in color and decoration, but they were alike in one detail-floating, wing-like draperies hung from the shoulders.

Chiquita had grown so large as to be almost unwieldy.  But her tropical coloring retained its vividness, retained its breath-taking quality of picturesqueness, retained its alluring languor.  She sat now holding a huge fan.  Indeed, since the day that Honey had piled the fans on the beach, Chiquita had never been without one in her hand.  Scarlet, the scarlet of her lost pinions, seemed to be her color.  Her gown was scarlet.

Lulu had not grown big, but she had grown round.  That look of the primitive woman which had made her strange, had softened and sobered.  Her beaute troublante had gone.  Her face was, the face of a happy woman.  The maternal look in her eyes was duplicated by the married look in her figure.  She was always busy.  Even now, though she chattered, she sewed; her little fingers fluttered like the wings of an imprisoned bird.  Indeed, she looked like a little sober mother-bird in her gray and brown draperies.  She was the best housewife among them.  Honey lacked no creature comfort.