"Jim."
"And you're eleven? You'll be old enough to have a gun very soon, Jim.
How would you like to shoot a real, live wild duck?"
"I _have_ shot plenty."
Marche laughed. "Good for you, Jimmy. What did the gun do to you? Kick
you flat on your back?"
The boy said gravely: "Father's gun is too big for me. I have to rest it
on the edge of the blind when I fire."
"Do you shoot from the blinds?"
"Yes, sir."
Marche relapsed into smiling silence. In a few moments he was thinking
of other things--of this muddy island which had once been the property
of a club consisting of five carefully selected and wealthy members, and
which, through death and resignation, had now reverted to him. Why he
had ever bought in the shares, as one by one the other members either
died or dropped out, he did not exactly know. He didn't care very much
for duck shooting. In five years he had not visited the club; and why he
had come here this year for a week's sport he scarcely knew, except that
he had either to go somewhere for a rest or ultimately be carried,
kicking, into what his slangy doctor called the "funny house."
So here he was, on a cold February night, and already nearly at his
destination; for now he could make out a light across the marsh, and
from dark and infinite distances the east wind bore the solemn rumor of
the sea, muttering of wrecks and death along the Atlantic sands beyond
the inland sounds.
"Well, Jim," he said, "I never thought I'd survive this drive, but here
we are, and still alive. Are you frozen solid, you poor boy?"
The boy smiled, shyly, in negation, as they drove into the bar of light
from the kitchen window and stopped. Marche got down very stiffly. The
kitchen door opened at the same moment, and a woman's figure appeared in
the lamplight--a young girl, slender, bare armed, drying her fingers as
she came down the steps to offer a small, weather-roughened hand to
Marche.
"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?"
[Illustration: "She said gravely: 'I am afraid it will be blue-bird
weather.'"]