THE UNSPEAKABLE PERK





I

MR. BEETLE MAN


The man sat in a niche of the mountain, busily hating the
Caribbean Sea. It was quite a contract that he had undertaken, for
there was a large expanse of Caribbean Sea in sight to hate; very
blue, and still, and indifferent to human emotions. However, the
young man was a good steadfast hater, and he came there every day
to sit in the shade of the overhanging boulder, where there was a
little trickle of cool air down the slope and a little trickle of
cool water from a crevice beneath the rock, to despise that
placid, unimpressionable ocean and all its works and to wish that
it would dry up forthwith, so that he might walk back to the
blessed United States of America. In good plain American, the
young man was pretty homesick.

Two-man's-lengths up the mountain, on the crest of the sturdy
hater's rock, the girl sat, loving the Caribbean Sea. Hers, also,
was a large contract, and she was much newer to it than was the
man to his, for she had only just discovered this vantage-ground
by turning accidentally into a side trail--quite a private little
side trail made by her unsuspected neighbor below--whence one