e boy felt a vague sensation of distress. He looked up at
his mother and the distress grew. She was still singing, but her mouth
kept getting queerer and queerer as she came to the line,--

"--give thanks, and sing."

He had never seen his mother cry before. He didn't suppose she could
cry. She was grown up. You don't expect grown-up people, like your
mother, to cry--except, of course, Nannie and Miss Shake.

"Rejoice, rejoice,
Rejoice, give thanks, and sing."

He sang it for her. The voices of the choir seemed suddenly to have
traveled a long way off and the tones of the organ were hushed. He heard
his own voice echoing in the silent church. The words seemed to come out
all wrong. He felt a terrible sense of oppression in the region of his
stomach, and he wondered if he were going to be ill. It was a relief to
hear himself crying at the top of his lungs, and to have Nannie scolding
him lovingly, and leading him out of the church. He drove home, sniffing
but comforted, in his father's lap.

"He felt it," old Nannie said to Burns, as she lifted him out of the
carriage. "The child understood, bless him!"

"There wasn't a dry eye come out 'f the church," said Burns, "except
them two selves."

"I wonder where they've gone?" said Nannie, eyeing Burns jealously.
"They must have took a train, I suppose?"

"That's telling," said the old man, whipping up the horses that were
covered with foam.

III

Four days is a long, long time, Marjorie had said, for the hours that
are breathlessly counted make long, long days; they are long as those of
summer-childhood in passing. But ever, when it comes May, and the soft,
chill breezes blow from the ocean across the sun-soaked sands, and the
clouds run dazzling races with the sea gulls, Marjorie will feel herself
running too, catching up breathless a few paces behind Leonard, as on
that second afternoon on a wind-swept beach of the Kentish coast. Like
mad things, their heads thrown back, hair flying, mouths open, the spray
smiting their open eyes, with all the ecstasy of their new-found energy,
they clambered over the slippery seaweed and leaped from rock to rock,
swept along with the winds, daring the waves, shouting down the surf.

Marjorie, when those spring days come round again, will remember a
little cove, sheltered from the wind, warmed by the fitful spring
sunlight, where, panting, they threw themselves down on the sand, bodies
glowing, faces to the