Quick Action Part 5

"Why not? You choose your own work, don't you?"

"Yes. But once the liberty of choice is exercised, freedom ends. I choose my profession. There my liberty ends, because instantly I am enslaved by the conditions which make my choice a profession."

She was deeply interested. A mossy log lay near them; she seated herself to listen, her elbow on her knee, and her chin cupped in her hand. But Jones became silent.

"Were you not in that funny little boat that pa.s.sed the inlet about three hours ago?" she asked.

"The _Orange Puppy_? Yes."

"What an odd name for a boat--the _Orange Puppy_!"

"An orange puppy," he explained, "is the name given in the Florida orange groves to the caterpillar of a large swallow-tail b.u.t.terfly, which feeds on orange leaves. The b.u.t.terfly it turns into is known to entomologists as _Papilio cresphontes_ and _Papilio thoas_. The latter is a misnomer."

She gazed upon this young man in undisguised admiration.

"Once," she said, "when I was nine years old, I ran away from a governess and two trained nurses. They found me with both hands full of muddy pollywogs. It has nothing to do with what you are saying, but I thought I'd tell you."

He insisted that the episode she recalled was most interesting and unusual, considered purely as a human doc.u.ment.

"Would you tell me what you are doing down here in these forests?" she asked, "--as we are discussing human doc.u.ments."

"Yes," he said. "I am investigating several thousand small caterpillars which are feeding on the scrub-palmetto."

"Is that your _business_?"

"Exactly. If you will remain very still for a moment and listen very intently you can hear the noise which these caterpillars make while they are eating."

She thought of the _Chihuahua_, and it occurred to her that she had rather tired of seeing things eat. However, except in Europe, she had never _heard_ things eat. So she listened.

He said: "These caterpillars are in their third moult--that is, they have changed their skin three times since emerging from the egg--and are now busily chewing the immature fruit of the scrub-palmetto. You can hear them very plainly."

She sat silent, spellbound; and presently in the woodland stillness, all around her she heard the delicate and continuous sound--the steady, sustained noise of thousands of tiny jaws, all crunching, all busily working together. And when she realized what the elfin rustle really meant, she turned her delighted and grateful eyes on Jones. And the beauty of them made him exceedingly thoughtful.

"Will you explain to me," she whispered, "why you are studying these caterpillars, Mr. Jones?"

"Because they are spreading out over the forests. Until recently this particular species of caterpillar, and the pretty little moth into which it ultimately turns, were entirely confined to a narrow strip of jungle, only a few miles long, lying on the Halifax River. Nowhere else in all the world could these little creatures be found. But recently they have been reported from the Dead Lake country. So the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution sent me down here to study them, and find out whither they were spreading, and whether any natural parasitic enemies had yet appeared to check them."

She gazed at him, fascinated.

"Have any appeared?" she asked, under her breath.

"I have not yet found a single creature that preys upon them."

"Isn't it a very arduous and difficult task to watch these thousands of little caterpillars all day long?"

"It is quite impossible for me to do it thoroughly all alone."

"Would you like to have me help you?" she asked innocently.

Which rather bowled him over, but he said:

"I'd b-b-be d-d-delighted--only you haven't time, have you?"

"I have three days. I've brought a tent, you see, and everything necessary--rugs, magazines, blankets, toilet articles, bon-bons, books--everything, in fact, to last three days.... I wonder how that tent is put up. Do you know?"

He went over to the canoe and gazed at the tent.

"I think I could pitch it for you," he said.

"Oh, thanks so much! May I help you? I think I'll put it here on this pretty stretch of white sand by the water's edge."

"I'm afraid that wouldn't do," he said, gravely.

"Why?"

"Because the lagoon is tidal. You'd be awash sooner or later."

"I see. Well, then, anywhere in the woods will do----"

"Not _anywhere_," he said, smiling. "High water leaves few dry places in this forest; in fact--I'm afraid that my shack is perched on the only spot which is absolutely dry at all times. It is a sh.e.l.l mound--the only one in the Dead Lake region."

"Isn't there room for my tent beside yours?" she asked, a trifle anxiously.

"Y-es," he said, in a voice as matter of fact as her own. "How many will there be in your party?"

"In my _party_! Why, only myself," she said, with smiling animation.

"Oh, I see!" But he didn't.

They lugged the tent back among the trees to the low sh.e.l.l mound, where in the centre of a ring of pines and evergreen oaks his open-faced shack stood, thatched with palmetto fans. She gazed upon the wash drying on the line, upon a brace of dead ducks hanging from the eaves, upon the smoky kettle and the ashes of the fire. Purest delight sparkled in her blue eyes.

Erecting her silk tent with practiced hands, he said carelessly:

"In case you cared to send any word to the yacht----"

"Did I say that I came from the yacht?" she asked; and her straight eyebrows bent a trifle inward.

"Didn't you?"

"Will you promise me something, Mr. Jones?"

The things he was prepared to promise her choked him for a second, but when he regained control of his vocal powers he said, very pleasantly, that he would gladly promise her anything.

"Then don't ask me where I came from. Let me stay three days. Then I'll go very quietly away, and never trouble you again. Is it a promise?"

"Yes," he said, not looking at her. His face had become very serious; she noticed it--and how well his head was set on his shoulders, and how his clipped hair was burned to the color of crisp hay.

"You were Harvard, of course," she said, unthinkingly.