ur
Aunt Kate?"

"Sure I will, Aunt Kate." Suddenly he guessed it. "Want me to get the man
that mends the boats?"

She nodded.

"I'll _try_ and get him for you, Aunt Kate."

"Try pretty hard, Worthie."

He started, but turned back. "What'll I tell him, Aunt Kate?"

The smile had lingered and the eyes were wonderfully soft just then.
"Tell him I'm here again and want to find out some more about the
underlying principles of life."

"The--now what is it, Aunt Kate?"

"Well just say life," she laughed tremulously. "Life'll do."

She found it hard to keep from crying. There had been too much. It had
been too long. It was not with clear vision she looked over at the big
house where Harry Prescott's wedding feast would be served on the morrow.

It seemed that about half of her life had passed before Worth came
back--alone.

Pretense fell away. "Didn't you get him?"

"Why, Aunt Kate, there's another man there. But don't you feel so bad,
Aunt Kate," he hastened. "We will get him, 'cause that other man is going
to tell him."

"Oh, he--then he is here?"

"Oh yes, he's here. He's just over at the shop."

"I see," said Aunt Kate, very much engaged with something she appeared to
think was trying to get in her eye.

"But, Worth," she asked, when she had blinked the gnat away, "what did
you tell this other man?"

"Why, I just told him. Told him you was here and wanted the _other_
man that mended the boats. The first man. The big man, I said. He
knows who I mean."

"I should hope so," she murmured.

"But what did you tell him I wanted to see him _for_?" she asked,
suddenly apprehensive.

Worth had sat down and begun upon a raft. "Why, I just told him. Told him
you had come to find out some more about life."

"_Worth!_ Told that to a _strange_ man!"

"But I guess he didn't know what I meant, Aunt Kate. He's one of those
awful dumb folks that talk mostly in foreign languages. I think he's some
kind of a French Pole--or _something_."

She breathed deeper. "Oh, well perhaps one's confidences would be
safe--with a French Pole."

"So he knows you want him, Aunt Kate, but he don't know just what you
want him for."

"Yes; that's quite as well, I think," said Aunt Kate.

The other half of her life had almost passed when again there were
footsteps--very hurried footsteps, these were.

It was not the French Pole, though some one who did not seem at home with
the English tongue, some one who stood there looking