"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?"
She said gravely: "I am afraid it will be blue-bird weather."