"Whatever that skirt's got," I said, "these pants haven't; but if you're happy I am."
Well, there's worse situations than desert-islanding it with the one woman in the world. I even know one man who claims he was cast away with a perfect stranger that he hated the sight of at first--a terribly small-minded, conventional woman--and still he had the time of his life. They got to like each other over a mutual taste for cribbage, which they played for sea-shells, yellow with a pink edge, until the woman went broke and got heavily in debt to the man. He was nice about it and let her off. He says the affair must have ended in matrimony, only she took a month to think it over; during that month they were picked up and carried to Honolulu; then they quarrelled and never saw each other again.
"Ivy," said I one day, "we'll be picked up by a passing steamer some day, of course, but meanwhile I'd rather be here with you than any place I can name."
"It's Eden," she said, "and I'd like to live like this always. But----"
"But people grow old," she said, "and one dies before another. That's what's wrong with Eden."
"Old! You and I? We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Ivy Bower."
"Right Bower," says she, "you don't understand----"
"You don't understand that Right Bower and Ivy Bower aren't the only people on this island."
She didn't turn a fiery red and bolt--the way young wives do in stories. She looked at me with steady, brave, considering eyes.
"Don't worry, dear," she says after a time; "everything will be all right. I know it will."
"Don't be afraid," said she. "And--and meanwhile there's dinner to be got ready--and you can have a go at your firesticks."
It was my ambition to get fire by friction. Now and then I got the sticks to smoke and I hoped that practice would give me the little extra speed and cunning that makes for flame. I'd always been pretty good at games, if a little slow to learn.
You'd think anxiety about Ivy'd have been the hardest thing to bear in the life we were living; and so it would have been if she'd showed any anxiety about herself. Not she. You might have thought she was looking forward to a Christmas-box from home. If she was ever scared it was when I wasn't looking. No--it was the beasts that made us anxious.