he stables before long."

"Ay, when this decanter is done," agreed Captain Harry.

"That was rather pretty of you," said Ruth, as she and the boy went
down the terrace stairs together.

"What?--asking old Hanmer to come with us? . . . Oh, but he's the
best in the world, and, what's more, never speaks out of his turn.
He has a tremendous opinion of you, too."

"Indeed?"

"Worships the very ground you tread on."

Ruth laughed. "Were those his words?"

Dicky laughed too. "Likely they would be! Fancy old Han talking like
a sick schoolgirl! I made the words up to please you: but it's the
truth, all the same."

They reached the pool; and the boy, after ten minutes spent in
discovering the biggest monster among the trout and attempting to
tickle him with a twig, fell to prodding the turfed brink
thoughtfully.

"We talked a deal about you, first-along," he blurted at length. "I
fancy old Han guessed that I was--was--well, fond of you and all that
sort of thing."

"Dear Dicky!"

"Boys are terrible softies at this age," my young master admitted.
"And, after all, it was rather a knockdown, you know, when papa's
letter came with the news."

"But we're friends, eh?--you and I--just as before?"

"Oh, of course--only you might have told. . . . And I've brought you
a parrot. Remember the parrots in that old fellow's shop in Port
Nassau?"

She led him to talk of his sea adventures, of the ship, of the West
Indies among which they had been cruising; and as they wandered
back from terrace to terrace he poured out a stream of boyish
gossip about his shipmates, from Captain Vyell down to the cook's
dog. Half of it was Hebrew to her; but in every sentence of it, and
in the gay, eager voice, she read that the child had unerringly
found his vocation; that the sea lent him back to the shore for a
romp and a holiday, but that to the sea he belonged.

"There's one thing against shipboard though." He had come to a halt,
head aslant, and said it softly, eyeing a tree some thirty yards
distant.

"What?"

"No stones lying about." Picking up one, he launched it at a
nuthatch that clung pecking at the moss on the bark. "Hit him, by
George! Come--"

He ran and she raced after him for a few paces, but stopped half-way,
with her hand to her side. The nuthatch was not hit after all, but
had bobbed away into the green gloom.

"Tell you what--you can't run as you used," he said critically.

"No? . . ." She was wond