oberly. Somehow going away from home
suddenly seemed a very solemn business.

"I guess that's the end of my cautions," smiled Mrs. King, "the end,
except to say that I hope you won't like Surfside so well that you'll
forget to come home now and then and tell me how you are making out.
Of course I'll have my boarders and work same's you; still, there'll
be times when we won't be busy and can see each other," her voice
trembled a little. "Nobody will be more anxious to hear of your doings
than I--remember that. I shall miss you, sonny. It's the first time
you've been away from me and I can't but feel it's a sort of
milestone. You'll be getting grown up and leaving home for good now
before I know it, same as Bob has."

Her eyes glistened and for an instant she turned her head aside.

"Oh, I shan't be branching out to make my fortune yet, Mother,"
protested Walter gayly. "I don't know enough. I'm not clever like
Bob--you said so yourself only the other day."

"You're clever as is good for you," was the ambiguous retort. "I'm
glad you're no different."

"Think of the money I'd be handing in if I could only earn as much as
Bob."

"The money? Aye, there's no denying it would be a help. However, with
what you and Bob and I are going to earn this summer we should make
out very well, even if your Uncle Mark Miller has left us in the lurch
and your Uncle Henry King's investments have gone bad on us. I'll be
turning a tidy penny with my boarders, thanks to you. And for a lad
your age ten dollars a week is not to be sneezed at. Why, we'll have
quite a little fortune between us!"

He saw her face brighten.

"Now if Bob could only be near at hand like you I believe I should be
entirely happy," she sighed. "I hate to think of him way out there on
that spit of sand with the sea booming all around him and nothing for
company but the other fellow, who's asleep whenever he's awake, and
that clicking wireless instrument. Imagine the loneliness of it! The
solitude would drive me crazy inside a week--I know it would."

"Bob doesn't mind."

"He's not the lad to say so if he did," replied the mother grimly.
"Nobody'd be any the wiser for what Bob thinks. Often at night I fall
to wondering what he'd do was he to be taken sick."

"Oh, he'd be all right, Mother," answered His Highness cheerfully.
"O'Connel is there, you know."

"And what kind of a nurse would he be, do you think, with his ear to
that switchboard from daylight until