As soon as it was keyed up to his satisfaction, he began thrumming on it, a sort of running accompaniment to their conversation.
It did not occur to Mary that she was eavesdropping, for they were talking of impersonal things, just the trifles of the hour; and she caught only a word now and then as she scanned the story of Enoch Arden.
The name Philip, in it, had arrested her attention.
"I think the maid of honor ought to wear something blue as well as the bride," remarked Phil.
"_Why ?_" asked Lloyd.
There was such a long pause that Mary looked up, wondering why he did not answer.
"_Why ?_" asked Lloyd again.
Phil thrummed on a moment longer, and then began playing in a soft minor key, and his answer, when it finally came, seemed at first to have no connection with what he had been talking about.
"Do you remember when we were in Arizona, the picnic we had at Hole-in-the-rock, and the story that that old Norwegian told about Alaka, the gambling god, who lost his string of precious turquoises and even his eyes ?" "Yes." Mary looked up from her book, listening alertly.

The mystery of years was about to be explained.
"Well, do you remember a conversation you had with Joyce about it afterward, in which you called the turquoise the 'friendship stone,' because it was true blue?
And you said it was a pity that some people you knew, not a thousand miles away, couldn't go to the School of the Bees, and learn that line from Watts about Satan finding mischief for idle hands to do.

And Joyce said yes, it was too bad for a fine fellow to get into trouble just because he was a drone, and had no ambition to make anything of himself; that if Alaka had gone to the School of the Bees he wouldn't have lost his eyes.

And then you said that if somebody kept on he would at least lose his turquoises.

Do you remember all that ?" The screw in the post stopped creaking as Lloyd sat straight up in the hammock to exclaim in astonishment: "Yes, I remembah, but how undah the sun, Phil Tremont, do _you_ happen to know anything about that convahsation?
You were not there." "No, but little Mary Ware was.