"And how about the other despoiler," I asked--"the young man with the
pneumatic pipe?"
"The 'pneumatic pipe'!" she repeated.
"'Pump,' I mean. Is he to be allowed all over the place to do as _he_
pleases? His scaling-ladders are littering up the bluffs--not that they
incommode the bluffs any; but if I lived here, I should want to brush them
away as I would sweep the cobwebs from my walls."
"I do not own the bluffs," she said in a distant, tremulous voice.
But the true answer to my question, as I surmise, was the sudden, helpless
flush which rose, wave upon wave, covering her poor little face, blotting
out all expression but that of painful girlish shame. Here, if I'm not
mistaken, will be found the heart of the difficulty. Miss Malcolm's
sympathies are evidently with compressed air rather than with electrical
transmission. I shall tell Tom he need waste no more arguments on her. Let
him first compound with his rival of the pump.
* * * * *
I suppose there is just such a low, big moon as this looking in upon you
where you sit, you little dot of a woman, lost in the piazza perspectives
of the Coronado; and you might think small things of our present
habitation--a little tent among the bushes, with wind-blown weeds against
the moon, shifting their shadow-patterns over our canvas walls.
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