Romance Island

At his desk next morning Chillingworth gave to St. George a note from Amory, who had been at Long Branch with The Aloha when the letter was posted and was coming up that noon to put ashore Bennietod.

"May Cawthorne have his day off to-morrow and go with me?" the letter ended. "I'll call up at noon to find out."

"Yah!" growled Chillingworth, "it's breaking up the whole staff, that's what it's doin'. You'll all want cut-glass typewriters next."

"If I should sail to-day," observed St. George, quite as if he were boarding a Sound steamer, "I'd like to take on at least two men. And I'd like Amory and Cawthorne. You could hardly go yourself, could you, Mr. Chillingworth?"

"No, I couldn't," growled Chillingworth, "I've got to keep my tastes down. And I've got to save up to buy kid gloves for the staff. Look here--" he added, and hesitated.

"Yes?" St. George complied in some surprise.

"Bennietod's half sick anyway," said Chillingworth, "he's thin as water, and if you would care--"

"By all means then," St. George assented heartily, "I would care immensely. Bennietod sick is like somebody else healthy. Will you mind getting Amory on the wire when he calls up, and tell him to show up without fail at my place at noon to-day? And to wait there for me."

Little Cawthorne, with a pair of shears quite a yard long, was sitting at his desk clipping jokes for the fiction page. He was humming a weary little tune to the effect that "Billy Enny took a penny but now he hadn't many--Lookie They!" with which he whiled away the hours of his gravest toil, coming out strongly on the "Lookie They!" until Benfy on the floor above pounded for quiet which he never got.

"Cawthorne," said St. George, "it may be that I'm leaving to-night on the yacht for an island out in the southeast. And the chief says that you and Amory are to go along. Can you go?"

Little Cawthorne's blue eyes met St. George's steadily for a moment, and without changing his gaze he reached for his hat.

"I can get the page done in an hour," he promised, "and I can pack my thirty cents in ten minutes. Will that do?"

St. George laughed.

"Ah, well now, this goes," he said. "Ask Chillingworth. Don't tell any one else."

"'Billy Enny took a penny,'" hummed Little Cawthorne in perfect tranquillity.

St. George set off at once for the McDougle Street house. A thousand doubts beset him and he felt that if he could once more be face to face with the amazing prince these might be better cleared away. Moreover, the glimpses which the prince had given him of a world which seemed to lie as definitely outside the bourne of present knowledge as does death itself filled St. George with unrest, spiced his incredulity with wonder, and he found himself longing to talk more of the things at which the strange man had hinted.