Part 37 (1/2)

”You're very thoughtful.”

”I'll have to beg your pardon,” he blurted, for Burroughs was no squire of dames. ”I thought you were a little girl and spoke to you as if----”

”It's just the hairpins that make the difference, isn't it?” said Arlee, with a whimsical smile. ”I don't suppose you have any of those in camp that I could borrow?”

He shook his head regretfully. Then his brain seized upon the problem. ”Bent wires?” he suggested. ”I might try----”

”Do,” she besought. ”I'll be grateful forever.”

He withdrew to make the attempt, and in his place came Billy with a tray of luncheon.

”Just--put it down,” Arlee said faintly. ”I'll eat--by and by.”

Worriedly Billy looked down on the girl. Her eyes closed. Excitement had ebbed, leaving her like some spent castaway on the sh.o.r.es. He dropped on his knees beside her, dipping a clean handkerchief in the jar of cold cream.

”Just let me get this off,” he said quietly. ”You'll feel better.”

Like a child she submitted, lying with closed eyes while with anxious care he took the sand from her delicate, burning skin. He did the same for her listless hands; he brushed back her hair and put water on her temples; he dabbed more cold cream tenderly on the pathetic little blisters on her lips.

”I'm--all right.” The blue eyes looked suddenly up at him with a clear smile. ”I'm--just resting.”

”And now you'll eat a bit?”

Obediently she took the sandwich he made for her, and lifted her head to drink the cup of tea.

”I'm a--nuisance,” she murmured.

”You're a _brick_!” he gave back, with m.u.f.fled intensity. ”You're a perfect brick!”

Then he backed hastily out of her presence, for fear his stumbling tongue would betray him--or his clumsy, longing hands--or his foolish eyes. He felt choking with the tenderness he must not express. He ached with his Big Brother pity for her, and with his longing for her, which wasn't in the least Big Brotherly, and with all the queer, bewildering jumble of emotion that she had power to wake in him.

Very silently he returned to Burroughs, and when he had made a trifle of a toilet and eaten far from a trifle of lunch, the two young men stretched themselves out in the shade, just beyond the entrance of the tomb, conversing in low tones, while around them the labor song of Burroughs' workmen rose and fell in unvarying monotony, as from a nearby hole they carried out baskets of sand upon their heads and poured the contents upon the heap where the patient sifters were at work.

Burroughs talked of his work, the only subject of which he was capable of long and sustained conversation. He dilated upon a rare find of some blue-green tiles of the time of King Tjeser, a third dynasty monarch, and a mummy case of one of the court of King Pepi, of the sixth dynasty, ”about 3300 B.C.,” he translated for Billy, and then suddenly he saw that Billy's eyes were absent and Billy's pipe was out.

In sudden silence he knocked out the ashes from his own pipe and slowly refilled it. ”Congratulations,” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and at Billy's slow stare he jerked his head back toward the tomb. ”I say, congratulations, old man.”

”Oh!” Billy became ludicrously occupied with the dead pipe.

”Nothing doing,” he returned decidedly.

”No? ... I thought----”

”You sounded as if you had been thinking. Don't do it again.”

”And also I had been remembering,” said Burroughs, with caustic emphasis, ”knowing that in the past wherever youth and beauty was concerned----”

So successfully had that past been sponged from Billy's concentrated heart, so utterly had other youth and beauty ceased to exist for him, that he greeted the reminder with belligerent unwelcome.