up there."

"Up where?"

"Oh, up there,"--with vague nod toward the head of the Island.

"He says he'd like to get acquainted with you, Aunt Kate. He says he
really believes you might be worth knowing."

Thereupon Aunt Kate's book fell to the floor with a thud of amazement
that reverberated indignation. "Well upon my word!" gasped she. Then,
recovering her book--and more--"Why what a kindly gentleman he must be,"
she drawled.

"Oh yes, he's kind. He's awful kind, I guess. He'll talk to you any time
you want him to, Aunt Kate. He'll tell you just anything you want to
know. He said you must be a--I forgot the word."

"Oh no, you haven't," wheedled Aunt Kate. "Try to think of it, dearie."

"Can't think of it now. Shall I ask him again?"

"Certainly not! How preposterous! As if it made the slightest difference
in the world!"

But it made difference enough for Aunt Kate to ask a moment later: "And
how did it happen, Worthie, that this kindly philosopher should have
deemed me worth knowing?"

"Oh, I don't know. 'Cause he liked the puppies' names, I guess. I told
him how their mother was just Queen, but how they was Pourquoi and
N'est-ce-pas--a 'quirer and 'versalist and so then he said: 'And which is
Aunt Kate?'"

"Which is Aunt _Kate? What_ did he mean?"

"'Is she content to be just Queen,' he said, 'or is she'--there was a lot
of long words, you wouldn't understand them, Aunt Kate--I didn't
either--'does she show a puppyish tendon'--tendon something--'to butt
into the universe?'"

Suddenly Aunt Kate's face grew pink and she sat straight. "Worth, was
this one of the men?"

"Oh no, Aunt Kate. He's not one of the men. He's just a man. He's the man
that mends the boats."

"'The man that mends the boats!' He sounds like a creature in flowing
robes out of a mythology book, or the being expressing the high and noble
sentiments calling everybody down in a new-thoughtish play."

From time to time Worth would bring word of him. What boats does he mend,
Aunt Kate wanted to know, and what business has he landing them on our
Island? To which came the answer that he mended boats sick unto death
with speed mania and other social disease, and that he didn't land them
on the Island, but on an island off the tip of the Island, a tiny island
which the Lord had thoughtlessly left lying disrespectfully close to the
Isle of Dignity. Katie was too true a romancer to inquire closely about
the man who mended the boats, for she