of the boat on a 'normous meadow all roses. I
stayed there for ever so long. It seemed almost a year, but the
Youngest Twin Sailor says I was only away a few hours or so. You see,
in Sunset Land the time is ever so much longer than it is here. But I
was glad to come back too. I'm always glad to come back to the cove
and Stephen. Now, you know this never really happened."

Miss Trevor would not give up the foolscap book so easily, but for a
long time Paul refused to show it to her. She came to the cove every
day, and every day Paul seemed more delightful to her. He was so
quaint, so clever, so spontaneous. Yet there was nothing premature or
unnatural about him. He was wholly boy, fond of fun and frolic, not
too good for little spurts of quick temper now and again, though, as
he was careful to explain to Miss Trevor, he never showed them to a
lady.

"I get real mad with the Twin Sailors sometimes, and even with
Stephen, for all he's so good to me. But I couldn't be mad with you or
Nora or the Golden Lady. It would never do."

Every day he had some new story to tell of a wonderful adventure on
rock or sea, always taking the precaution of assuring her beforehand
that it wasn't true. The boy's fancy was like a prism, separating
every ray that fell upon it into rainbows. He was passionately fond of
the shore and water. The only world for him beyond Noel's Cove was the
world of his imagination. He had no companions except Stephen and the
"rock people."

"And now you," he told Miss Trevor. "I love you too, but I know you'll
be going away before long, so I don't let myself love you as
much--quite--as Stephen and the rock people."

"But you could, couldn't you?" pleaded Miss Trevor. "If you and I were
to go on being together every day, you could love me just as well as
you love them, couldn't you?"

Paul considered in a charming way he had.

"Of course I could love you better than the Twin Sailors and the
Golden Lady," he announced finally. "And I think perhaps I could love
you as much as I love Stephen. But not as much as Nora--oh, no, I
wouldn't love you quite as much as Nora. She was first, you see; she's
always been there. I feel sure I couldn't ever love anybody as much as
Nora."

One day when Stephen was out to the mackerel grounds, Paul took Miss
Trevor into the little grey house and showed her his treasures. They
climbed the ladder in one corner to the loft where Paul slept. The
window of it, small and square-p