Free Dolan of Sugar Hills by Kate Starr

busied herself elsewhere.
    “I have the impression,” said Sheila in a low voice, “that that’s what you don’t want to do.”
    There was a moment’s silence.
    “You’re supersensitive,” Cane Dolan said coolly. “I’m a businessman, I can do no good here for a week or two, so naturally I won’t stay around kicking my heels.”
    He paused once more, then spoke harshly, unreasonably harshly to her.
    “You, too,” he said, “can begin earning your money, Miss Guthrie.”
    Before she could answer, he resumed sharply, “We’ll leave first thing in the morning. Kindly confine yourself to two bags.”

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    After breakfast the next morning, Hans came around with the Land Rover and piled Sheila’s bags in the back.
    Sheila climbed in beside Hans, Cane beside Sheila.
    The children waved goodbye, but Molly, Sheila noted, did not come out.
    They went down a winding track through more cane fields, beaten-down grasses this time, diabolically entwined and tangled.
    The plantation went right to the coast. Sheila remembered Cane telling her on the Sunlander that from where he cut some of his crops a coral island would only be a stone’s throw.
    A boat that looked rather small to Sheila, with only a confined space under a low canopy to serve as a cabin, awaited them at a tiny jetty. It had no name, just a painted Sugar Hills.
    “It’s not very big,” Sheila stated.
    “What’s worrying you?” Cane taunted. “You said once this was a millpond.”
    “And you said it could change its face...”
    “The craft is completely seaworthy,” he returned flatly. “Get in, please. I’ll stow the bags.”
    The engine kicked over promptly; everything Cane possessed would be efficient, Sheila thought. Not quite so dubious now, she sat back as the little boat moved off.
    Sheila looked around, then forgot her qualms.
    It was beautiful, almost breathtakingly beautiful. Everywhere there were islands, hundreds of islands, islands with fjordlike inlets and pine-clad cliffs rising steeply above the inlets, islands with gently shelving beaches and unbelievably white sands.
    “It’s coral sand,” Cane said. He eyed her. “You know about coral, of course, having planned a collection.” His voice baited her.
    She flushed. “No, I know nothing,” she admitted.
    He told her briefly how living coral was the home of a tiny coral polyp which was responsible for its formation by the deposit of lime; how in time it built reefs; how these white beaches she was now admiring were the result of coral being pounded by the sea for millions of years.
    “Our Great Barrier Reef is some twelve hundred miles long; that’s a lot of reef; and a lot of coral.” He narrowed his eyes at the horizon.
    Presently he chugged the boat into a little rocky mooring. It disturbed a large turtle that nosed lazily away.
    “This is actually still Australia,” Cane told Sheila, “in spite of the fact that we’ve traveled a mile or so, and in spite of Mandalay appearing to be an island. I consider Mandalay—that’s its name—has one of the best of all coral collections, so you must see it before we move farther east.”
    He secured the boat, turned around, regarded Sheila a moment, then swung her up in his arms and stepped ashore.
    “There was no need to do that,” she told him stiffly.
    He glanced back at the rocky anchorage.
    “I wouldn’t have done it if you’d been suitably dressed.”
    She followed him a little sulkily up the path to the charming bungalow, but once there her sulkiness fled.
    Here was something she never had dreamed about ... a coral garden lovelier than any floral garden ... lovelier than anything she had seen ... all shapes, all varieties, of coral, every color in the world.
    “This is dead coral, of course,” explained Cane. “Actually it’s the combined skeletons of thousands of coral polyps. Lovely as this is—” he waved an idle arm over the groups of starlike flowers, branches and mushroom formations