Angel Island

"Chiquita, on the contrary, isn't sleeping as much as she did," Frank

said. "She's more active, though - physically, I mean. She's rejoicing

at present over the fact that she's lost twenty-five, pounds in the last

three months. She said last night that she hadn't been so slim since she

was a girl."

"Twenty-five pounds!" exclaimed Honey. "That's a good deal to lose. How

the hell - how do you explain it!"

"Increased household activity," Frank replied vaguely. "And then

mentally, I think she's more vigorous. She's been reading a great deal

by herself. Formerly I found that reading annoyed her - even when I read

aloud, explaining carefully as I went along."

"I haven't noticed an increased activity on Julia's part," Billy said

thoughtfully. "But she's always been extraordinarily active, considering

everything. The way she gets about is marvelous. But of course she's

planned the placing of her furniture with that in view. She's as quick

as a cat. I have noticed, however, that she seems much happier. They

certainly are a changed lot of women."

"The twelve o'clock whistle has just blown," Honey announced. "Let's

eat."

The five men dropped their tools. They gathered their lunches together

and fell to a voracious feeding. At last, pipes appeared. They stretched

themselves to the smoker's ease. For a while, the silence was unbroken.

Then, here and there, somebody dropped an irrelevant remark. Nobody

answered it.

They lay in one corner of the big space which had been cleared from the

jungle chaos. On one side rippled the blue lake carving into many tiny

bays and inlets and padded with great green oases of matted lily-leaves.

On the other side rose the highest hill on the island. The cleared land

stretched to the very summit of this hill. Over it lay another chaos,

the chaos of confusion; half-completed buildings of log and stone,

rectangles and squares of dug-up land where buildings would some day

stand, half-finished roadways, ditches of muddy water, hills of round

beach-stones, piles of logs, some stripped of the bark, others still

trailing a green huddle of leaf and branch, tools everywhere. The jungle

rolled like, a tidal wave to the very boundary; in places its green

spume had fallen over the border. As the men smoked, their eyes went

back to the New Camp again and again. It was obvious that constantly

they made mental measurements, that ever in their mind's eye they saw

the completed thing.

"Well," said Ralph, reverting without warning to the subject under

discussion. His manner tacitly assumed that the others had also been

considering it mentally. "I confess I don't understand women really.

I've always thought that I did. But I see now that I never have."

Addington's rare outbursts of frankness in regard to the other sex were

the more startling because they contrasted so sharply with his normal

attitude of lordly understanding and contempt. "I've been a good manager

and I'm not saying that I haven't had my successes with them. But as I

look back upon them now, I realize I followed my intuitions, not my

reason. I've done what I've done without knowing why. I have to feel my

way still. I can't account for the change that's come over them. For

four years now they've been at us to let their wings grow again. And for

four years we've been saying no in every possible tone of voice and with

every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get

over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with

her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months

ago, she had an awful attack of hysteria because I told her I'd have to

cut Angela's wings as soon as she was grown-up."