“And then,” Honey went on decidedly, “it’s not natural for women to fly.  God never intended them to.”

“It is wonderful,” Lulu said admiringly, “how men know exactly what God intended.”

Honey roared.  “If you’d ever heard the term sarcasm, my dear, I should think you were slipping something over on me.  In point of fact, we don’t know what God intended.  Nobody does.  But we know better than you; the man’s life broadens us.”

“Then I should think — " Lulu began.  But again she did not finish.

“We’re going to make a tower of rocks on the central island of the lake,” Honey went on.  “We’ll drag the stones from the beach — those big, beauty round ones.  When it’s finished, we’re going to cover it with that vine which has the scarlet, butterfly flowers.  Pete says the reflections in the water will be pretty neat.”

“Really.  It sounds charming.  And, Honey, Chiquita is so lazy.  Little Junior runs wild.  He’s nearly two and she hasn’t made a strip of clothing for him yet.  It’s Frank’s fault, though.  He never notices anything.  I really think you men ought to do something about that.”

“And then,” Honey went on.  But he stopped.  “What’s the use? " he muttered under his breath.  He subsided, enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke and listened, half-amused, half-irritated, to Lulu’s pauseless, squirrel-like chatter.

“My dear,” Frank Merrill said to Chiquita after dinner, “the New Camp is growing famously.  Six months more and you will be living in your new home.  The others — Pete especially — are very much interested in Recreation Hall.  They have just worked out a new scheme for parks and gardens.  It is very interesting, though purely decorative.  It offers many absorbing problems.  But, for my own part, I must confess I am more interested in the library.  It will be most gratifying to see all our books ranged on shelves, classified and catalogued at last.  It is a good little library as amateur libraries go.  The others speak again and again of my foresight during those early months in taking care of the books.  We have many fine books — what people call solid reading — and a really extraordinary collection of dictionaries.  You see, many scholars travel in the Orient, and they feel they must get up on all kinds of things.  I suggested to-day that we draw up a constitution for Angel Island.  For by the end of twenty years, there will be a third generation growing up here.  And then, the population will increase amazingly.  Besides, it offers many subjects for discussion in our evenings at the Clubhouse, etc., etc., etc.”

Holding the tired-out little junior in her lap, Chiquita rocked and fanned herself and napped — and woke — and rocked and fanned herself and napped again.

“Oh, don’t bore me with any talk about the New Camp,” Clara was saying to Pete.  “I’m not an atom interested in it.”

“But you’re going to live there sometime,” Pete remonstrated, wrinkling in perplexity his fiery, freckled face.