touch of
stiffness, which I had experienced the last time I saw her, and which I now
quite understood, might have grown out of knowledge.

"We are going first to the West Indies and then on to Canada. It may be a
long time before I'm back, and I did want to see you once more before I
went. I began to fear I was not going to."

"'Oh, we're very strict here, you know, and we have rules. Oh, heaps of
rules! But I knew dear Miss Maddy would manage it when she knew how I
wanted to see you;" and she ran up to Miss Maddy and kissed the little
brown ormer shells over her ears, and Miss Maddy patted them hastily lest
the tiny kiss should have set them awry.

"And how did you leave them all in Sercq? And when did you see Aunt Jeanne
last? And who's taking care of my boat? And--"

"Wait!" I laughed, "or I shall forget some of them. I saw Aunt Jeanne this
morning just before I left. She thought we sailed at once. She would have
sent you her love, and maybe some gache, if she had known--"

"Ah, ma fe! How I wish she had known!" sighed Carette longingly, for Aunt
Jeanne Falla's gache had a name all over Sercq.

"And everybody is well except old Pere Guerin, and he is cutting a new
tooth, they say, and it makes him sour in the temper."

"Why, he's over ninety!" exclaimed Carette.

"Ninety-two next January. That's why he's so annoyed about it. And your
boat is safe in the top nook of Port du Moulin, all covered over with
sailcloth and gorse. Krok and I did it, and he will soak it for ten days
before you come home, and have it all ready for you."

"The dear old Krok!"

"Oh, we have taken very great care of it, I assure you. But maybe you will
be too grown-up to care for it by the time you get back."

"Perhaps!" And oddly enough--though indeed it may have been only my own
thought, and without reasonable foundation--thereupon there seemed to fall
between us a slight veil of distance. So that, though we talked of Sercq
and of our friends there, it seemed to me that we were not quite as we had
been, and I could not for the life of me tell why, nor, indeed, for certain
if it were so or not.

When I was leaving, however, Carette put both her hands in mine and gave me
Godspeed as heartily as I could wish, and I made my best bow to Miss Maddy,
and went back to the _Hirondelle_ well pleased at having seen Carette and
at her hearty greeting and farewell, but with a little wonder and doubt at
my heart as to what the final effect of al