Blue-Bird Weather

"My brother will show you to your room," she said. "Supper will be ready

in a few minutes."

So he thanked her and went away with Jim, relieving the boy of the

valise and one gun-case, and presently came to the quarters prepared for

him. The room was rough, with its unceiled walls of yellow pine, a

chair, washstand, bed, and a nail or two for his wardrobe. It had been

the affectation of the wealthy men composing the Foam Island Duck Club

to exist almost primitively when on the business of duck shooting, in

contradistinction to the overfed luxury of other millionaires

inhabiting other more luxuriously appointed shooting-boxes along the

Chesapeake.

The Foam Island Club went in heavily for simplicity, as far as the

two-story shanty of a clubhouse was concerned; but their island was one

of the most desirable in the entire region, and their live decoys the

most perfectly trained and cared for.

Marche, washing his tingling fingers and visage in icy water, rather

wished, for a moment, that the club had installed modern plumbing; but

delectable odors from the kitchen put him into better humor, and

presently he went off down the creaking and unpainted stairs to warm

himself at a big stove until summoned to the table.

He was summoned in a few moments by the same girl who had greeted him;

and she also waited on him at table, placing before him in turn his

steaming soup, a platter of fried bass and smoking sweet potatoes, then

the inevitable broiled canvas-back duck with rice, and finally home-made

preserves--wild grapes, exquisitely fragrant in their thin, golden

syrup.

Marche was that kind of a friendly young man who is naturally

gay-hearted and also a little curious--sometimes to the verge of

indiscretion. For his curiosity and inquiring interest in his fellow-men

was easily aroused--particularly when they were less fortunately

situated than he in a world where it is a favorite fiction that all are

created equal. He was, in fact, that particular species of human

nuisance known as a humanitarian; but he never dreamed he was a

nuisance, and certainly never meant to be.

Warmth and food and the prospects of to-morrow's shooting, and a

slender, low-voiced young girl, made cheerful his recently frost-nipped

soul, and he was inclined to expand and become talkative there in the

lamplight.

"Has the shooting been pretty good?" he asked pleasantly, plying knife

and fork in the service of a raging appetite.

"It has been."

"What do you think of the prospects for to-morrow?"

She said gravely: "I am afraid it will be blue-bird weather."