. It was almost morning before that other girl, that
girl they were trying to get away from, would let Ann go to sleep.

Sitting beside the tortured girl that night, hearing the heart-breaking
little moans which as sleep finally drew near replaced the sobs, Katie
Jones wondered whether many of the things people so serenely took for
granted were as absurd--and perhaps as tragically absurd--as Captain
Prescott's complacent conclusion that the "Don't You Care" girls were
girls who didn't care.

How she would love--turning it all over in her mind that afternoon--to
talk some of those things over with "the man who mends the boats"!

CHAPTER XII

She had only known him for about twenty days--"The man who mends the
boats"--but she had fallen into the way of referring all interesting
questions to him. That was perhaps the more remarkable as her eyes had
never rested upon him.

One morning Worth had looked up from some comparative measurements of the
tails of Pourquoi and N'est-ce-pas to demand: "Why, Aunt Kate, what do
you think?"

"There are times," replied Aunt Kate, looking over at the girl swaying
in the hammock, humming gently to herself, "when I don't know just what
to think."

"Well sir, what do you think? The man that mends the boats knows more
'an Watts!"

"Worthie," she admonished, "it's bad business for an army man to
turn traitor."

"But yes, he does. 'Cause I asked Watts why Pourquoi had more yellow than
white, and why N'est-ce-pas was more white 'an yellow, and he said I sure
had him there. He'd be blowed if he knew, and he guessed nobody did,
'less maybe the Almighty had some ideas about it; but yesterday I asked
the man that mends the boats, and he explained it--oh a whole lot of long
words, Aunt Kate. More long words 'an I ever heard before."

"And the explanation? I trust it was satisfactory?"

"I guess it was," replied Worth uncertainly. "'Twas an awful lot of
long words."

"My experience, too," laughed Aunt Kate.

"With the man that mends the boats?"

"No, with other sages. You see when they're afraid to stay down here on
the ground with us any longer, afraid they'll be hit with a question that
will knock them over, they get into little air-ships they have and hurl
the long words down at our heads until we're too stunned to ask any more
questions, and in such wise is learning disseminated."

"I'll ask the man that mends the boats if he's got any air-ships. He's
got most everything