Next, Harley Kennan directed him toward the woman sitting up in the deck-chair and bending forward, with hovering hands of greeting.

Jerry obeyed.

He advanced with flattened ears and laughing mouth: but, just ere she could touch him, the wind fluttered the skirt again and he backed away with a snarl.
"It's not you that he's afraid of, Villa," he said.

"But of your skirt.
Perhaps he's never seen a skirt before." "You mean," Villa Kennan challenged, "that these head-hunting cannibals ashore here keep records of pedigrees and maintain kennels; for surely this absurd adventurer of a dog is as proper an Irish terrier as the _Ariel_ is an Oregon-pine-planked schooner." Harley Kennan laughed in acknowledgment.

Villa Kennan laughed too; and Jerry knew that these were a pair of happy gods, and himself laughed with them.
Of his own initiative, he approached the lady god again, attracted by the talcum powder and other minor fragrances he had already identified as the strange scents encountered on the beach.