cool spell in August . . . She stood huddling her scarf about her shoulders, watching his brown intent forearms and his coarse, cropped head exactly like his sister’s, mildly desiring breakfast. I wonder if he’s hungry? she thought. She remarked:
“Aren’t you rather chilly this morning without a coat?” He carved at his object with a rapt maternal absorption, and after a while she said, louder:
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to buy one?”
“I hope so,” he murmured . . . then he raised his head and the sun shone full into his opaque yellow-flecked eyes. “What’d you say?”
“I should think you’d wait until we got ashore and buy one instead of trying to make one.”
“You can’t buy one like this. They don’t make ’em.” The cylinder came in two sections, carved and fitted cunningly. He raised one piece, squinting at it, and carved an infinitesimal sliver from it. Then he returned it to its husband. Then he broke them apart again and carved an infinitesimal sliver from the other piece, fitted them together again. Miss Jameson watched him.
“Do you carry the design in your head?” she asked.
He raised his head again. “Huh?” he said in a dazed tone.
“The design you’re carving. Are you just carving from memory, or what?”
“Design?” he repeated. “What design?”
It was much cooler to-day.
......
There was in Pete’s face a kind of active alarm not quite yet dispersed, and clutching his sheet of newspaper he rose with belated politeness, but she said, “No, no: I'll get it. Keep your seat.” So he stood acutely, clutching his paper, while
