The sea girl

Her voice lifted a little, joyously, with the second line, and one by one the other children took it up and sang with her, the fresh, happy voices ringing out clearly in the dusk. And so, still singing, they walked and drove into town just as lights began to be lighted in the houses along Orange Street, and a few hardy stars came out overhead through the gathering snow clouds and twinkled down in benediction, as they must have twinkled over a far-away land across the seas, twenty centuries ago, on a group of young shepherds who also came, singing, to celebrate that first Christmas of all.

“Father’s boat was to get in today,” Lilla Joy declared as they dropped Mart and herself at their door. “He promised he’d be home for Christmas. I wonder what he’s brought from Boston.”

“Passengers, for one thing,” Mart laughed. “He was going to bring some cousins of the Gardeners’ over to spend the holidays—off-islanders, you know. I wish’t it was Lis who was coming,” he added, awkwardly. “Doesn’t seem just right to have Christmas without him, does it, Erica?”

Erica put out her hand impulsively and clasped his strong, calloused palm with sudden gratitude. “Thank you, Mart,” she said, softly. “No, it—it seems sort of—all wrong.”

When the others had been left at their several homes, Tommy helped Erica drag her tree into the house and set it up in the usual place between the hearth and the north window. Then, without waiting to trim it, the cousins went across the garden, dragging the last tree between them.

A sound of voices in the sitting room made them stop in the hall of the other house and peep in at the open door. Aunt Callie was seated in her big rocker by the hearth, with Aunt Charity opposite her, and between them, in chairs drawn comfortably up to the red glow of the coals, sat a fair, ruddy-cheeked young man with an unmistakably seafaring air about him, and a slender girl about Erica’s own age, dressed in black.

The girl’s face was pale in the firelight, and so thin the features looked oddly pinched and sharp. Her forehead was puckered in three fine, vertical lines that gave her a fretful, unhappy expression.

At Mrs. Folger’s feet—where the two at the door had not seen her in this first glance—a pretty little girl of three or four sat on a low hassock, one plump, rosy cheek pressed confidingly against Aunt Callie’s knee. The child’s hair, which clustered in tight, bronze-colored curls over her charming little head, reflected the firelight in warm splashes of reddish gold with each move she made, and now, at some sound from the hall, she turned a blue-eyed, baby smile that way.

Mrs. Folger called: “Tommy! Erica! Is that you, dears?”

They came in then, dragging the bushy pine tree, and the curly-haired baby uttered a little shriek of delight at sight of it.

“Clistmus t’ee!” she shouted, gleefully. “Barbee’s Clistmus t’ee. All for Barbee!”

Mrs. Folger addressed the young man with the seafaring look about him, who had risen politely at Erica’s entrance.

“Bernard, this is my niece, Erica Folger—you remember Captain Eric, of course. And my son Tom. Children, this is a cousin of mine, Mr. Bernard Gatchel, whom I have not laid eyes on since my marriage. He came to Nantucket today on Captain Joy’s sloop, on a sad errand.” She hesitated, and laid a gentle hand on the thin, fretful girl’s dark hair.

“These are his sister’s children—Mildred and Barbara Thorne. Their mother and I went to school together in Boston.” Mrs. Folger had not been a Nantucket girl. “Besides being second cousins, we were very close friends and loved one another dearly. Tommy has certainly heard me talk of Cousin Jane Thorne.”

The boy nodded bewilderedly, and then smiled in answer to a flash of small white teeth between Barbee’s parted lips.

“Cousin Jane died a month ago,” Mrs. Folger said. “So this is not a happy Christmas for my poor Milly.” Again that motherly touch on the dark hair; but there was no lighting or softening of the fretful face below it, and Erica, looking on, was conscious of a resentful sense of vicarious rebuff.

“Their father died more than two years ago,” Mrs. Folger wound up her explanation and introduction in one, “and Cousin Bernard here, being mate on a packet that sails out of New York next week, cannot, of course, take charge of Mildred and little Barbee. And Cousin Jane had asked him, before she died, to bring them to me. She knew her babies would be as welcome as my own.”

“You mean,” Tommy asked, startled into unconsidered speech, “that they’re going to—to live here, mother?”

Even as the words escaped him he realized their inhospitable import, and bit his lip, coloring miserably. But—a strange girl in the house—that cunning baby, Barbee, didn’t count, of course—eternally underfoot, making a fellow stay constantly on his company behavior!

The object of his uncomplimentary thoughts turned to stare at him around the back of her chair, her eyes looking enormously big and black in her white, sulky face, and the boy thought he saw in them a malicious enjoyment of his confusion.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, clearly and too sweetly. “Yes, I believe Barbee and I are going to live here. Your mother has very kindly asked us to stay.”

The black eyes passed on to Erica, and stared at her with a keenness that seemed to miss no smallest detail of her appearance.

“Do you live here, too?” the dark girl asked then, fretfully, tapping the toe of her black shoe on the brass andiron nearest her.

“No, I live next door, with Aunt Charity,” Erica said, politely, feeling inwardly guilty because she was so glad she was not to live in the same house with this sulky, unattractive stranger. Feeling, too, tremendously sorry for poor Tommy, who had exchanged the daily companionship of Lis for Milly Thorne.

She had a swift, dismayed vision of the change from the old, happy existence Lis, Tommy, and she had known, which the coming of Mildred and Barbee Thorne would mean. Then the sight of Milly’s black dress softened her to shamed remorse.

“And here I was thinking about Tommy’s and my Christmas being spoiled,” she scolded herself, silently. “Erica Folger, you deserve just no Christmas at all!”

CHAPTER V

It was a white Christmas day, after all. During the night it had snowed hard and steadily, but the snow ceased just before dawn, and Nantucketers woke to a Christmas morning of blue skies and golden sunshine over a white-carpeted island.

The two windows of Erica’s room faced toward the harbor below, and with the first slim fingers of sunlight poked in at all the small panes she was awake in her big mahogany bed with the pineapple posts. She lay there blinking drowsily at the light, until she noticed the thin rim of snow on the sill of her opened window. Then she sprang out of bed, shivering, for the room was bitterly cold, and pattered on bare feet across the wide, painted boards of the floor.

Shutting the window energetically, she stood there a moment looking out on a new and shining white world.

“It’s cold enough for skating, too,” she told herself, drawing her high-necked flannel night dress closer about her. The boys would clear some of the snow on Long Pond, or Hummock, as they did each year with the first snowfall, and that afternoon—She stopped, her breath quickening.

“Why—why, it’s Christmas morning!” she exclaimed, astonished that she could have forgotten even for that brief, half-waking interval. “A white Christmas, just like Lilla Joy said it would be.”

Her thoughts flew, by a natural kinship of ideas, from Christmas snow to Christmas trees and stockings. Every Christmas, as far back as she could remember, Erica had gathered up her unexplored and bulging stocking and an armful of packages, and gone across the garden to her cousins’ house, to have the added fun of sharing surprises with Tommy and Lis.

This year there would be only Tommy to open bundles with, but—— She stopped abruptly for the second time since waking that morning, as memory gave her another little reminding nudge. The bright face clouded. There wouldn’t be only Tommy this morning. She had completely forgotten Milly and Barbee Thorne.

“But I’m not going to start Christmas by taking silly dislikes and judging folks unkindly,” Erica decided, sturdily. “As Aunt Callie said last night, it’s not going to be a happy Christmas for Milly this year, without her mother.”

She began to pull on her clothes rapidly, still shivering a little, for she was in far too much of a hurry to stop and light the fire which was laid on the broad hearth, ready at the touch of a match to send a comforting golden flame chimneyward.

When she was dressed, she took her woolly red cape from the deep wardrobe and wrapped herself in it, drawing the gathered hood over her tumbled red curls. She looked, with her eager young head cocked alertly on one side, her bright eyes, and the red of her cloak, not unlike an energetic robin redbreast defying snow and cold, in search of an early breakfast worm.

Downstairs she paused in the parlor long enough to admire anew the glistening tree she and Aunt Charity had dressed late last night, and then snatching the fat white stocking hanging from the blackened oak mantel, she tucked it under her cape, with one arm, and with her other retrieved an exciting pile of various sized packages laid out on the end of the sofa, where her particular share of Christmas was always put. The next moment she was out the side door, the sharp wind stinging fresh roses into her already glowing cheeks, and turning the tip of her straight little nose a matching pink.

The snow had not been swept from the porch yet, as the elderly Portuguese, who did the numerous outdoor chores about the place, had not made his appearance at this hour. Fortunately the snow was powdery and dry, for Erica was far too excited to remember such practical things as rubber boots, and dashed across the white garden, arriving, bright-eyed and panting, at her aunt’s side door, just as Tommy, who had watched her approach, opened it to admit her.

The boy put a finger to his lips, grinning, and jerked his head stairward. “Nobody else is awake yet, I guess,” he explained. “Come on in where the tree is, and I’ll light the fire.”

“We picked two good trees yesterday,” Erica observed judicially, watching him light the paper under the kindling, and blow gently to keep the slender flame going. Then her eyes filled suddenly and quite unexpectedly, so that she turned to inspect the tree with great attention, until she had managed to wipe the tell-tale drops away with the back of her hand.

It had come upon her with a force that brought a choking lump into her throat, how much they missed Lis at this familiar Christmas-morning ceremony. It had always been Lis who waked early enough to have the fire roaring hotly before Erica and her stocking appeared. Tommy, struggling with cold and awkward fingers to repair his forgetfulness, was all at once a pathetic figure.

He fumbled so long about getting the fire burning that she wondered, unhappily, if perhaps he, too, were not trying to avoid her glance. She was sure of it a moment later, when he sat back on his heels, muttering under his breath something about smoke getting in his eyes.

But neither of them spoke of what both were feeling, and a moment later they were seated on the carpeted floor before the hearth, their filled stockings on their laps, and opened and unopened packages strewn about them.

But as swiftly as their fingers flew in unwrapping the presents, their unwonted mood of gravity slipped into the normal, joyous excitement of Christmas morning. At last, having examined everything and found it eminently satisfactory, they bundled the wrapping paper into the blaze, and sat contentedly silent for a while, munching sweets from the now empty stockings.

“Christmas must be sort of—funny at sea,” Erica declared, finally, out of that unusual silence.

“Yea-ah,” Tommy’s mouth was uncomfortably full for articulate speech. “Guess Lis’ll be thinking ‘bout us, right this minute.” He sighed. “Wish I could have gone, too, Rick.”

Erica made a face. “And left me here high and dry by myself. No thank you.”

Tommy grinned. “Oh, you’d have had Milly Thorne,” he consoled her wickedly.

Erica ignored this flippancy, and returned to her contemplation of the fire. “I think Christmas at sea might be—rather beautiful, too,” she said, slowly, not looking around. “I love the ocean, Tom. I guess maybe it’s because I was born at sea that I’ve always sort of felt I belong to it. You know,” she added more briskly, “how Sun Li always addresses the presents he sends me home by father, ‘To my Honorable God-daughter, the little Sea Girl’—I love that for a name.”

Tommy grunted. He privately thought it rather flowery and Oriental, but both Lis and he had been carefully respectful on the subject of Sun Li with Erica, ever since one memorable occasion when she had flashed into a towering rage at the age of five, over a bit of teasing on Tommy’s part, and, after flying at the twins like a small wild cat, scratching, biting, and kicking, had wound up with a burst of utterly heart-broken and most unwonted tears. It was the tears that had done more to prevent a repetition of the remarks she objected to, than the temper that had preceded them.

About fifteen minutes later, Aunt Callie and the two visitors arrived downstairs, and Barbee Thorne went into such ecstasies over the trimmed tree and her stuffed stocking, that the moment’s attention was centered entirely about her. Aunt Callie, with her sister-in-law’s help, had hurriedly gotten together some additional gifts for her two new charges at the last minute, so there was a doll for Barbee—a discarded one of Erica’s childish days, redressed by Aunt Charity before she went to bed on Christmas Eve.

The pair of new skates which were to have been Aunt Callie’s present to Erica she had given to Milly instead, and a little note, tucked into Erica’s stocking, explained the exchange, and substituted a string of rose coral beads which Milly Thorne could not have used with the sad little black dresses she was wearing.

Erica was delighted with the corals, though she could not help a small pang of regret for the loss of those beautiful, shining ice skates. Her old pair were almost past sharpening, after years of hard use.

It would have been easier if Milly had only appreciated the skates. She had thanked Mrs. Folger politely, but evinced no enthusiasm at the news, delivered eagerly by Tommy, that Erica and he would take her skating that afternoon on Long Pond.

“I can’t do much skating myself, on account of my leg not being strong enough yet,” he explained. “But we’ll all go out there, and Rick and the Joys will look after you.”

“I don’t know how to skate,” Milly said, in that fretful manner they had resented last evening. “You know, I’ve always lived in the city till now.”

“Oh, we’ll teach you in no time,” Tommy offered, confidentially, though some of that first sparkle of friendly generosity had gone out of his tone under the dampening effect of her lack of responsiveness.

“Mother always said I took cold so easily, she didn’t like me to go out in the snow,” Milly objected, shivering a little. “I think I’d rather stay in here by the fire, with Cousin Callie, if you please. Maybe some other time I’ll feel more like going.”

The words were civil enough, but Tommy and Erica looked at each other blankly. Afraid of taking cold in that brief, infrequent snow so eagerly waited for by the Nantucket children!

But they were too polite—and also too honestly amazed—to voice a further protest, and soon after the long-drawn-out, bountiful Christmas dinner was finished, they took up their skates, harnessed old Polly to the sleigh, and departed for Long Pond, stopping to pile in the young Joys and the Macys on the way.

“I should think,” Tommy observed to his cousin, as he saw her struggling with the worn straps of the old skates at the pond’s edge, “that Milly might have lent her new skates to you, as she won’t use them herself. You know, mother really bought them for you in the first place.”

Erica bit back a sigh, and answered with a heroic effort at absolute fairness: “Well, I was sort of hoping she’d say something about it. But, of course, she doesn’t know they were meant for me, or that my old ones are in such a state.” She surveyed her feet with a rueful air. “I can make these do another year,” she admitted. “It’s only the thought of her not using the others that makes me a little mad.”

“Mother wouldn’t like me to talk about a guest,” Tommy observed, grimly, “but it does seem to me it’s bad enough to have to miss Lis about the house, without——” He didn’t finish his sentence, but Erica put a swift hand on his arm understandingly.

“I know,” she agreed. “It’s going to be harder on you than on me, Tommy. I guess Lis’ll be in Canton in another month now, don’t you? D’you suppose he’ll really meet Sun Li?”

In the interest of the discussion that followed, Milly Thorne and her irritating qualities were forgotten for the time being. It was, therefore, almost as much of a shock to come home that afternoon, flushed with the cold and exercise, and find her sitting by the fire in her black frock, with her fretful young face and sharp, unfriendly black eyes, as it had been the night before when they had first seen her there.

And in the days that followed, neither Tommy nor Erica ever quite lost that first instinctive sense of her being a stranger. It was not that she often did or said anything actively quarrelsome; it was just that she failed utterly to fit into their little circle; so obviously preferring to sit aloof with a book on her lap, but with those strange, unchildlike eyes of hers fixed on the fire instead of the open page before her, that the young Folgers’ efforts to include her in their plans grew more and more half-hearted and perfunctory as time wore on.

Being kind-hearted youngsters, they were honestly sorry for her in her evident unhappiness, and a glance at her black dress was always sufficient to check a too-sharp retort whenever she proved unusually apathetic and aggravating. But friendly relations could not be said to advance appreciably in the household, and Mrs. Folger and Miss Charity, looking on, grew seriously troubled by the situation.

Fortunately, Barbee Thorne made up to everyone for her sister’s deficiencies. Such a rosy, sunny-tempered, affectionate baby was certainly never seen before, the family agreed unanimously. She was never sick or cross or unhappy. She adored everybody about her indiscriminately, and was as easy to amuse and take care of as a kitten or a puppy.

To Erica, who had clung to a large collection of dolls until she was almost twelve, Barbee Thorne was a live doll, to be played with, dressed, and mothered without the uncomfortable consciousness that she was doing something unfitting the new dignity of her teens. Barbee was a distinct addition to the combined Folger households, as far as Erica was concerned. But Milly was a problem to be faced afresh with each new day.

At school, whither she accompanied Erica and Tommy for the new term after Christmas, Milly speedily proved herself quick at her lessons and genuinely interested in the class work. During school hours she lost her sullen air, and seemed more content and like other children. She always had good marks in all her studies, and as a natural consequence soon found herself in high favor with Miss Minor, their teacher. With the rest of the pupils, however, she maintained that same unfriendly aloofness to which she clung so persistently at home. She made no friends, except Miss Minor, who often invited her home to tea after school was over, and occasionally, with Mrs. Folger’s permission, kept her overnight in her tiny, gray-shingled house on Pearl Street.

From these visits Milly returned with a new softness in her black eyes, and a noticeable lessening of that peevish discontent which so irritated Tommy and Erica and worried their elders. But the change never lasted more than a few hours at most, when some unfortunate remark of one or another of the family would, all unintentionally, send her back into her sullen unfriendliness once more.

“She’s like a clammy wet blanket round the house all the time,” Erica complained once, bitterly, to Tommy and Lilla Joy. “It doesn’t make a speck of difference whether you try to be nice to her or lose your temper and speak the truth about her manners. She’s just as disagreeable and anxious to get rid of your company and be alone, either way. Of course, I know she’s lost her mother and her home, and I’m sorry for her as I can be. I’d like to be friends, if she’d only let me. But when some one won’t meet you even a quarter of the way, what’s a person to do, anyhow?”

“Maybe she’ll get over it,” Lilla Joy suggested, hopefully. Lilla was no more prejudiced in the newcomer’s favor than Erica, but she adored the latter and was merely trying to be comforting on general principles.

“I wish Lis were at home,” Erica responded. “He’s not the kind that gets excited and flies off at a tangent as Tommy and I do. He’s sort of quiet, you know, and soothing. I guess perhaps he could find out what’s ailing Milly. Somehow I don’t believe it’s all grief for her mother. That would make her unhappy, but it needn’t make her sulky and hate folks as she seems to. Tommy says it’s just my imagination, but I really do think there’s something else—something quite different—that’s worrying her and making her act this way.”

“I suppose you couldn’t ask her,” Lilla said.

“I’ve tried once or twice,” Erica confessed. “Sort of roundabout, you know, so she wouldn’t think I was just curious. But you—you can’t seem to get at Milly at all.”

“Well, old Lis ought to be home in another month, now,” Tommy said. “We counted up, Rick, you remember, that April at the latest would bring the Spray back. Maybe sooner.”

His listeners both brightened. “I’d forgotten it was quite so near,” Lilla declared. “My, Tommy, I’ll be glad to see Lis round here again! He’s quieter than you, but he leaves a—a sort of hole when he’s away.”

“I know,” Erica confirmed, gloomily. “I don’t see why I couldn’t have been born a boy, and then Tommy and Lis and I could have all shipped together.”

The 1st of April came and went, but no news of Lister Folger came to Nantucket. By the end of the first week in that month the whole Folger family showed the strain of suspense by a most novel abstraction and a tendency to start nervously at sounds.

The Spray would not, of course, put in at Nantucket, on her return voyage, but there had already been more than ample time for her to have reached Boston, her home port, and for Lis to have either made the trip from there to the island, or to have written, if, for some reason, Captain Bartlet had not wished him to leave the ship.

CHAPTER VI

The first two weeks in April came and went without news of Lis. Then, on a rainy afternoon in the middle of the month Erica and Tommy, sitting on the floor before the grate fire in Miss Charity’s sitting room reading out of the same book of old sea tales, heard a knock on the front door. Erica rose, yawning, and crossed the passage to answer it, urging Tommy vehemently not to turn a page until her return.

The afternoon light had almost gone now, and with the glow of the fire still in her eyes she blinked unrecognizingly at the bulky figure standing on the porch in the dusk.

“Doesn’t thee remember me, missy?” a deep voice asked in the familiar Quaker speech that more than half the island used.

Erica gave a little gasp, and one hand flew instinctively to her throat as if breathing had all at once become difficult.

“Captain—Bartlet,” she whispered. She had no reason—yet—for the swift fear that raced along her nerves; but without stopping to reason what prompted her action, she stepped hurriedly out on the little porch and drew the front door softly to behind her. Then, her hands clenched at her sides to control their trembling, she lifted her head gallantly and looked the big captain in the face. “Did—didn’t Lis come with you?” she asked in a shaky little voice.

Captain Bartlet cleared his throat twice before he answered her. “No, missy,” he said at last. “That’s why I came here to see Miss Charity first, before I see Lister’s mother.” He put a huge hand on Erica’s shoulder. “My dear, thee is going to be a brave little woman, isn’t thee, and help me?”

Erica didn’t recognize her own voice when it came, it sounded so strained and lifeless, but she held it perfectly steady with all her young strength. “Please talk softly,” she said, and motioned over her shoulder to the house behind her. “Tommy’s in there, waiting for me. Tell me what’s happened—first. Lis isn’t—isn’t—dead?” She brought out the terrible word with an effort.

The captain’s hand tightened comfortingly on her shoulder.

“I hope not, my dear child. I trust not,” he said, hesitating, as if he were trying to pick and choose his words carefully. “But the truth is, missy, that I know nothing at all. Lis went ashore, our last night in Canton. I didn’t see him go, but Myrick, the first mate, told me later he’d gone ashore in the same boat with him. Then they parted. Lister wanted a final look at the city, and the mate had some business about the cargo to see to.”

He paused, and Erica said, breathlessly, “Yes. And then——”

“That’s the last we know,” Captain Bartlet replied, sorrowfully. “He didn’t come back to the ship that night, nor the next morning. He’d never stayed away like that before. It was strictly against the rules, and Lister was a good boy, steady as a clock.”

“But——” Erica almost screamed it at him, forgetting Tommy for the moment—”you never sailed, and—and left Lis alone, lost, in China? You—oh, you must have searched for him, Captain Bartlet!”

“Of course we searched, missy,” he said, quickly. “We put off our departure for the best part of a week and pretty near turned that bloomin’ old Chinese city upside down with our hunting. But there wasn’t a trace—not so much as a whisper. I even remembered that tale thee told me about a Chinese godfather who sent thee presents and whose seal thee drew for me in the flower pot that day. Doesn’t thee remember? I had seen that seal before, though the man it belonged to wasn’t named Sun Li.”

“But—but he is,” Erica protested. “Why, my father knows him—oh, very well!”

“That may all be,” the other assented, gravely. “I found thy godfather, little Erica. He gave me an audience when I used thy name and thy father’s.”

Erica caught her breath. “You—you saw Sun Li? Oh, Captain Bartlet, who is he?”

“A very great man in his own land,” the captain declared. “Governor of the province. Also a man high in favor at the imperial court, it is whispered. Where thy father got the name of Sun Li, I know not. Perchance it is some little name of friendship by which he chooses to be known to thee, to hide his true rank. But for Captain Eric’s sake he was exceedingly gracious to me and heard all my tale of Lister’s disappearance with much interest. At its conclusion he promised to have search made for the lad and to send word if he were found. He bade me return to America, since, after all, even for thy cousin’s sake, I could not hold up the Spray and her cargo indefinitely. A captain’s duty is first of all to his owners. And I had exhausted all my resources in the search. If the governor could not find him, surely I could do nothing.”

The door at their backs was suddenly flung open violently, and Tommy, his blue eyes wide with a kind of startled horror, stood on the threshold, staring at the two outside.

“What’s that you’re saying about Lis?” he cried. “I heard Rick call out his name and something about not leaving him behind. What’s the matter?”

Erica ran to him and clasped his arm with two strong, nervous young hands. “Tommy, don’t look like that, please, dear,” she begged, her voice thick with the tears she was trying so hard to hold back. “And it isn’t sure yet that he—— Sun Li is having a search made for him, and—and Sun Li’s governor of Canton, Tommy, so you see, he can do——”

Tommy cut her short, “Where is Lis?” he demanded, his glance going from Erica to the big figure of Captain Bartlet on the porch.

The captain shook his head helplessly, tried for words, and choked ignominiously. There was something heart-breaking about the tense questioning of Tommy’s blue eyes, before which the bluff, kindly old sailor felt all the sympathetic attempts at reassurance he wanted to utter seem useless. He looked pleadingly at the girl between them.

“Tommy, we don’t know,” Erica said, bravely, tightening her grasp on her cousin’s arm. “You’ll have to help us, dear, because we’ve got somehow to tell your mother.”

“All right,” the boy said, briefly. “Tell me first.” And he added, just as Erica herself had done, “He isn’t—dead, Rick?”

“We don’t know, dear,” Erica repeated, and for a little moment her red head went down on Tommy’s arm and one big, uncontrollable sob shook her. But almost instantly she had herself in hand once more, and, lifting her head, repeated in a steady voice the story Captain Bartlet had just told her.

Tommy listened quietly, only wincing once, when she came to the departure of the Spray, leaving Lis behind her. “What did Sun Li think, sir?” he said of Captain Bartlet when Erica was done. “Was he—at all hopeful, sir?”

“I can’t tell a thing about what a Chinaman thinks,” the captain said, ruefully. “Their faces never seem to change, no matter what they’re feeling inside them. But as I told missy here, he was very courteous as soon as Captain Eric’s name was mentioned, and promised to do all that lay in his power to find the lad.” He broke off with an exclamation and thrust a hand into the inner pocket of his coat in search of something.

Presently, after much rummaging among several pockets, he produced a small package, done up in gilt paper, and sealed with huge gold seals showing the strange Chinese characters both children were already familiar with on other, similarly wrapped parcels that had come home with Captain Eric Folger in the Sea Gull.

Captain Bartlet handed it to Erica. “The governor sent this to thee, missy,” he explained.

“Oh, what do I care about presents at a time like this!” Erica cried, impatiently.

“I’d open it,” Tommy advised. “There may be some sort of message inside to tell what he’s going to do about Lis.”

“Of course. I never thought of that,” Erica agreed, and tore at the gorgeous wrappings with trembling fingers.

Inside was a small square box of carved teakwood, ornamented with curious clasps of hammered brass that looked like dragons’ wings. A tiny brass key was tied to one of the clasps with a knot of orange cord, and when this had unlocked the little box, it proved to contain a pair of long, beautifully carved earrings of deep green jade, with pear-shaped drops at the ends, of delicately tinted pink pearls. They were lovely, graceful things, and by the look of them extremely valuable, though wholly unsuited to a child of Erica’s age. But at the moment Erica hardly gave them a glance, since all her attention was concentrated on the few lines of heavy, flourishing writing on a small orange card that was inclosed with the earrings.

To the little Sea Blossom, my very dear and honorable Goddaughter [ran the writing], with the assurance that Sun Li will either return her cousin to her in safety or terribly punish those who have harmed him. Let the little Sea Girl believe that nothing shall be left undone and that word shall be sent speedily by the first ship, when there is news.

Box, note, and the jade-and-pearl earrings slipped from Erica’s hands, to fall with a little tinkle on the wooden floor of the porch. “Oh, Tommy, as if his punishing the men who hurt Lis will do us any good!” she choked. “That may be the Oriental way of looking at things. I want Lis back, well and safe. Sun Li’s just an old Chinese heathen,” she wailed. “What does he know of how Americans feel about things?”

“I don’t know that it’s such a heathen point of view,” Tommy put in, in a new, grim voice. “If anybody’s hurt Lis, I want ‘em punished as much as Sun Li does. Rick,” he said, his tone changing suddenly and piteously, “why did I have to break my leg that time and give Lis a chance to go in my place? Then he’d be here safe and sound right this minute.”

“And you’d be over there in China,” Erica reminded him, quickly. “No, that wouldn’t be a bit better, Tommy dear.”

“That doesn’t follow necessarily,” Tommy insisted. “I might not have gone ashore that last night. Or—or—oh, it might have been different lots of ways. But that does no good to think of now,” he added, soberly. “We’ve got to tell mother next, I guess. You—— Please come with us, Captain Bartlet. Mother will want to ask you questions, I know.”

They crossed the garden without further words, the three walking abreast, their faces grave and anxious. Mrs. Folger, opening the door at Erica’s knock, scarcely needed the captain’s kind, stumbling explanation, to know that trouble of some sort had come to Lister.

She heard him out quietly, for she came of a race that had been well and early trained in self-control.

“Please come into the sitting room, Captain,” she said then, closing the front door behind them—for the four had been standing in the narrow entry hall. “There’s a fire in there, and the evening’s turned cool. I would take it kindly of you if you could sit a while and let me ask you all the details, so I can know better how to shape my plans.” Her face worked suddenly, but no tears came, and Erica, knowing how hard her aunt was struggling not to give way, thought better of her own eager impulse to run to her and fling comforting arms about her neck.

They sat down before the bright grate fire, with Tommy standing behind his mother’s chair, as if he could not bear to watch her face that was so quiet and so very white.

Milly Thorne, who had been curled up in a corner of the sofa at the right of the hearth, with a book on her lap, rose silently and crept nearer, till she crouched like a small thin black kitten at Mrs. Folger’s feet, her big, straining black eyes lifted with a new softness and pity in them, to the older woman’s face.

Erica fought down a swift, unworthy little pang when she saw her aunt’s hand go almost unconsciously to Milly’s tumbled black hair and rest there as if she found some small comfort in the contact.

And then Milly said a thing that surprised both her young cousins, her voice quite unlike the querulous voice of Milly Thorne as they had heard it since her arrival in the household. “I know what it’s like, Cousin Callie,” she whispered, fiercely, and laid her cheek against Mrs. Folger’s knee with a gentle, caressing touch that was as un-Milly-like as her voice. “I know. I—adored my mother.”

Erica, with a big lump in her throat, glanced quickly and remorsefully at Tommy. Had they really been unkind all this past winter when they thought they were merely paying a spoiled and ungrateful girl back in her own coin? It was not a pleasant thought, particularly at a moment like this. Erica was inclined to resent the realization unreasonably. They had enough to bear with all this dreadful news about Lis, without having their feelings further harrowed up with remorse for past treatment of Milly. Why couldn’t Milly have been normal, and cried and showed her grief so ordinary folks could understand? She’d certainly acted, most of the time, as if she hated them all and was in Nantucket under compulsion only.

“When do you sail again for Canton, Captain?” Aunt Callie was asking, steadily, when Erica pulled herself out of the rather morbid reflections she was so unwontedly entertaining.

“In another week, ma’am,” he said. “Just time to unload cargo and take on another we’ve got, consigned to Hong Kong. We sail to Hong Kong first, and then to Canton, this trip. There’ll surely be good news waiting when we reach there. Thee must keep up a good heart, Mrs. Folger. Thy boy will come sailing back to thee yet, strong and hale, or my name’s not Judson Bartlet. Thee must hope and pray, and have faith in the Lord’s goodness.” He spoke quite simply, and with such evident conviction that Mrs. Folger stretched out her hand to him in swift and wordless gratitude, faintly touched with a new hope.

“And perhaps Erica’s father will bring good news, even before Captain Bartlet’s ship has time to go and return,” Milly Thorne reminded them, her cheek still against Mrs. Folger’s knee like a snuggling kitten. “The governor is a friend of his and will surely have done his utmost to get word to him, if there were news before the Sea Gull sailed. And——” she hesitated, and looked from Mrs. Folger up to Tommy, standing white-faced and tense behind her chair—”why shouldn’t Tommy go back with Captain Bartlet on this next trip?” she asked, unexpectedly. “He still needs a cabin boy, now that Lister——” She stopped and smiled a little, obviously pleased at the glow of eagerness that flashed across Tommy’s face like a crimson flame. “Then he would be on the spot if there is any news waiting when the ship arrives. He wanted very much to go in the first place, I know, and perhaps he can talk to this Sun Li more—more personally, as Lister’s brother and Captain Folger’s nephew. And Barbee and I will be here to look after you,” she wound up, touching the hand that still rested affectionately on her head.

“Oh, mother!” Tommy burst out in a voice of such desperate pleading as needed no other explanations of how he felt in the matter. “Milly, you—you’re——” He choked audibly and turned very red at such a frank betrayal of sentiment. “Mother, I’ve just got to go,” he finished.

“If we could only wait until your Uncle Eric’s ship returns,” Mrs. Folger began, uncertainly. “We’re expecting him back almost any time, you know. He may have news, dear.”

“But I—want to go to sea,” Tommy said, vehemently. “I’ve wanted it all my life. I only gave it up so Lis could have my chance. Now—now when it means I can be on the spot, as Milly says, to help search for him, I——Mother, I just can’t stay at home and wait. Please, please don’t ask me to!” He had his hands on her shoulders and was bending over the low chair back, to look earnestly into her troubled face. “Mother, we—we can’t just leave Lis over there without one of us going——”

Mrs. Folger glanced at Captain Bartlet inquiringly, and he met her eyes with a little nod of reassurance. “I think it a good plan, if thee will trust him to me, ma’am,” he confirmed his nod, gravely.

Erica turned to the fire and stared into its glowing depths with eyes so blinded by tears all they could see was a dull red blur. First Lis and now Tommy! Men and boys had all the chances in this world. Girls and women had just to stay at home and suffer and wait and wait. She rumpled her short red curls, bitterness in her heart, and listened to the slow voices of Captain Bartlet and her aunt, and the eager, young voice of Tommy, discussing the new plan.

CHAPTER VII

Tommy returned with Captain Bartlet to Boston the following day. His going left a great gap in the family, that was made still more apparent by the cloud of anxiety on Lister’s behalf which hung over the two Folger households. But it was agreed, before he left, that his mother and Erica should go to Boston two days before he was to sail, and stay with a cousin of Mrs. Folger’s, so they could see the Spray for themselves—this had been the captain’s kindly suggestion—and have another opportunity to say good-by to Tommy before his long voyage began.

Miss Charity promised to keep an eye on Milly and little Barbee for the short time the others should be gone, and the prospect of the trip, and the hurried preparations for it—the Spray was to sail in a week—helped everybody through that first almost unbearable period of suspense while they waited for news from China, which could not possibly reach them before the arrival of the next tea clipper from the other side of the world.

The Nantucket Steamship Company, which ran boats between New Bedford and the island, had, the summer before, put on a new big boat, the Massachusetts, and it was arranged that Mrs. Folger and Erica should go by that to the mainland, and from New Bedford to Boston by train. The trip, counting the waits and changes, would occupy the best part of a day, and Erica, who had never been off the island since she had been brought there as a six-months-old baby to be placed in Miss Charity’s care, was faintly ashamed of the eager excitement with which she found herself contemplating this entrancing chance to see new worlds—even if they were no farther away and no stranger than New Bedford and Boston. She told herself severely that with this dreadful uncertainty about Lis making her heart ache, and her breath catch sharply in terror whenever she stopped to realize the news Captain Bartlet had brought, she oughtn’t to be able to feel happy and excited over anything, no matter how novel and alluring. How could one feel frightened and sad and thrilled and adventurous and sort of—palpitating—all at the same time?

She said something, shyly, about it to Aunt Charity once, and the latter proved unwontedly understanding.

“It’s the prospect of doing something, dearie, that’ll take your mind off our fears for a time,” her aunt said, gently, putting a tender hand on the girl’s shoulder. “And unconsciously, too, perhaps you have a hope that news—good news—will be waiting in Boston with some ship just back from China. And you’re young, Erica. Youth swings quickly from mood to mood. It doesn’t mean you’re any the less worried over poor Lis’s fate. Take this little trip and enjoy it all you can. Seeing you hopeful will be the best way to help Aunt Callie.”

The Spray was to sail with the early morning tide on Saturday, so on Thursday Mrs. Folger and Erica embarked on the new Massachusetts, of which the islanders were so proud, and were borne over a blue and almost rippleless sea toward the far-away mainland which Erica, at least, had never seen before. For one cannot, as the girl pointed out very earnestly to the friendly, gray-bearded captain when he stopped beside their chairs on deck, to chat a moment—one cannot be said really to have seen a place one has only been carried through at the age of six months.

The gray captain twinkled at the eager young face with its shining eyes, and the bobbed red curls dancing alively against each smooth cheek flushed with the sharp little sea wind.

“Pity you ain’t a lad like Tommy, now, Miss Ricky, ‘stid o’ a pretty gal,” he murmured, gallantly. “Ye’d ha’ been a rare one to run away to sea adventures now, wouldn’t ye? I mind your father when he wasn’t no older than ye be, an’ he had the same hungry li’l’ imp o’ excitement in his eyes.”

He passed on with a chuckle, and Erica leaned her chin on the iron rail and stared dreamily at the slowly heaving, lazy blue water. Suppose she were really a boy—suppose she were sailing day after tomorrow with Tommy, on the Spray! They’d see China together—Canton, Foochow, Hangchow, Cochin-China—all those myriad names of pure romance that had sung in her listening ears ever since she first heard them in her sea-faring father’s tales of his voyages. They’d visit Sun Li, too, and there’d be splendid news of Lis waiting for them in her Chinese godfather’s gorgeous palace. Perhaps Lis himself would be there and they’d all three go sight-seeing, and—and——

She rubbed her eyes like a person just waking out of a deep sleep, at the sound of Aunt Callie’s gentle voice asking her a question. Erica sighed heavily as she turned to answer. What was the use of imagining impossibilities? One had always to wake again and remember one was only a stay-at-home girl. And there wasn’t any good news yet. Lis wasn’t waiting for them in Sun Li’s Cantonese palace. Perhaps—perhaps they’d never—no, no use imagining that way, either. She’d only end by crying, and making Aunt Callie cry with her.

They arrived at Cousin Kate Kingsley’s house on Mount Vernon Street in time for supper, and found Tommy there ahead of them, busily describing to Cousin Kate the many superior advantages of the Spray above all other China-bound clippers.

Captain Bartlet had given him the evening ashore, but he had to report back on board by nine o’clock. Erica was as eager to hear as Tommy to tell, so supper was largely taken up with animated talk between the two young people. Now and then some mention of Lis, or China, brought a swift cloud to both the girl’s and boy’s faces; but, after all, they were at an age when hope is easier to believe in than despair; and since there was as yet no positive proof of harm having come to Lister, it was natural enough they should cling to an optimistic confidence in the eventual happy outcome of all their fears and troubles.

Meantime, here was adventure ahead for Tommy, and present new scenes and wonders for both in the mere fact of being off familiar Nantucket and in big, busy Boston, about which so much talk at home centered among the fisher folk.

Mrs. Folger, while not daring to let herself share their optimism, was faintly conscious of a little stirring of courage in her thoughts of the future. Perhaps, after all, there would be some explanation of her boy’s strange disappearance. Perhaps her brother-in-law’s ship, the Sea Gull, now supposed to be well on its homeward course, would bring good news. Or perhaps Tommy himself would find Lis, safe and sound, in Sun Li’s palace when the Spray reached Canton.

Cousin Kate smiled on them all, and plied them hospitably with tempting dishes of her own concocting, to which Erica and Tommy, at least, did ample, and appreciative justice.

The following morning Tommy came ashore bright and early, and, with Cousin Kate to play guide, the three Folgers spent the time up to the midday dinner hour in seeing as much of Boston as the limits of time and space permitted.

In the afternoon Tommy personally conducted them all aboard the Spray, where Captain Bartlet was waiting, bluff and genial and anxious to please, to show them alow and aloft over his slim and graceful clipper now lying at anchor on the gently ruffled waters of the harbor.

She had finished taking her cargo on board, and had moved out to a roomier anchorage offshore where she could the more easily spread her white gulls’ wings with the next morning’s early tide, and slip away on the first tack of her voyage to the East.

Captain Bartlet had sent one of her boats in to the wharf to transfer his expected visitors to the ship, and they spent—for Erica, at all events—an enchanted three hours thereafter, exploring the marvelous intricacies and surprises which a ship of that size, and especially a sailing-ship, invariably possesses for the inexperienced landsman.

The last tearful good-bys to Tommy, which must be said on board, rather obscured the earlier happiness of the afternoon, though the boy kept saying, rather jerkily and with an over-emphatic cheerfulness: “It’s only for six months or so, mother. Why, Rick, you know you’d give your eyes to be going, too!” He did not materially deceive any of his feminine relatives, and was finally forced to desist, by a most unmanly and uncomfortable lump in his own throat.

But they got through the bad moment without actually breaking down, and were rowed back to the wharf, waving a whole sheaf of handkerchiefs with pretended gayety to a madly-waving, long-legged Tommy perched precariously on the Spray’s port rail. However, as things turned out, they might have postponed the farewells until later, for, just as they were sitting down—rather silent, and inclined to avoid each other’s eyes—at Cousin Kate’s lavishly spread supper table that evening, the heavy knocker on the front door clanged and Tommy himself appeared in the dining-room door, in Cousin Kate’s wake. He announced that the captain had sent him ashore with a message to be delivered, and had added permission for a final visit to his family.

The Spray carried a few cabin passengers, all of whom, but one, had come aboard with their possessions that afternoon. One, however, a widow traveling out to Canton to join a merchant brother engaged in the tea trade, had been detained by some unexpected emergency and could not go out to the ship until morning. Captain Bartlet had, therefore, sent Tommy ashore to tell her that the Spray would sail by seven o’clock and that a boat would be waiting at the wharf for her promptly at six.

“I’ll have some supper, too, if I may, Cousin Kate,” he added, with his cheerful grin at sight of the array of food under which the table groaned. “Then I’ll go to see Mrs. Haven—she’s only a block or two from here—and give her the captain’s message.”

“Oh, Tommy, let me walk around with you!” Erica pleaded. “You can bring me back to the steps. We’ll walk fast to make up time.”

To this Tommy agreed, and when the meal was over and a second round of farewells said all over again, Erica followed him out to the hall. Here, out of sight of Mrs. Folger and Cousin Kate, Tommy produced an awkwardly wrapped bundle from a chair where it had been hidden from view by his heavy seacoat.

“Rick, I brought back that extra suit mother insisted on my taking,” he said, hurriedly. “It’s really too small for me now, and, anyhow, I haven’t room for a lot of shore clothes that I shan’t need. You saw for yourself what a little bit of a cubbyhole I have to sleep and keep my things in. I’ve got one good suit already for going ashore. Don’t show this to mother till I get off in the morning, and then just explain I don’t need it.”

“All right. I’ll take it upstairs to my room,” Erica assented. “I’ll only be a moment getting my bonnet and cape.”

It was scarcely more than a minute when she ran eagerly down the stairs again, wrapped in her woolly red cloak, and the cousins let themselves out the front door into the warm, late April dusk.

High up overhead a pale little evening star was winking at them cheerfully over the chimney pots of the houses across the way. The lamp-posts, too, had already sprung into cheerful winking pin-points of light down the street ahead of them, and a general air of peacefulness and hope seemed abroad on the soft evening air.

Erica, swinging along briskly at Tommy’s side, felt her courage—which had wilted a bit after supper, when faced by those second, final good-bys—revive sturdily. She slipped her fingers through his arm and spoke hesitantly.

“Tommy, somehow—I can’t tell you why, and maybe you’ll only say I’m silly—but I do feel that it’s going to be—all right with Lis, when you get to Canton.”

“Well, mostly I feel that way myself,” Tommy responded, gravely. “Seems as if there’s just got to be good news when the Spray arrives. Only——” he turned about suddenly, and Erica saw that the boy’s face was working in a piteous effort not to show his feelings. “Only—suppose there—there isn’t—anything?”

Erica’s optimism of a moment before died, in a flash, to a sick kind of fear such as, even when Captain Bartlet first told her Lis was missing, she had not known in quite such intensity.

To know that Tommy, gay, light-hearted, unimaginative Tommy, felt this way about his quest, on the very eve of his departure, knocked the carefully-built-up supports of Erica’s own belief from under it.

But she couldn’t send him away with any added doubts to trouble the several months’ voyage during which no news of any sort could reach him, and in which he would have no one from his old life to say a cheerful word.

“You mustn’t let your mind dwell on that possibility, Tom,” she said, earnestly. “Sun Li will have something good to tell you. I—I just feel he will. You know how powerful a governor is, in China.” Neither she nor Tommy knew a thing about his powers, but it sounded likely, and she saw with satisfaction that the boy’s set face had relaxed a little at her words.

There was no time to say more then, for they were at the door of Mrs. Haven’s imposing red-brick house on the corner, and Erica bade Tommy leave her there at the steps while he went up to deliver his message. She was in no mood, just then, for meeting strangers.

Evidently the lady herself came to the door at his knock, for Erica, below in the shadows, heard a brisk duet of voices asking and answering questions—Tommy’s and a soft, rich, jolly sort of voice that must be that of the Spray’s belated passenger. Then Tommy came running down again, and the jolly, chuckly voice called after him gayly:

“If I had only known there was to be a nice boy like you on board, I vow I’d have brought my nephew along for company. He fair pestered the life out of me last vacation to take him to Canton.”

“I suppose it’s too late now?” Tommy paused halfway down to suggest. The idea of another boy of his own age evidently appealed to him.

The lady said she was afraid it was too late, and went back into the house, calling out that she’d see him in the morning, only that six o’clock was a heathenish hour to expect anyone to be packed and down at the wharf ready for a journey.

“She seems a good-natured sort of person, but silly,” Tommy observed, sagely, to Erica, as they retraced their steps to Cousin Kate’s door. “She’s the kind that gushes over everything a body says, and squeaks ‘oh!’ and ‘la!’ and talks about the sea being romantic. Huh!”

Tommy, used to the New England control and measured speech of his mother and aunt, was divided between disgust and amusement over this very different type. “She’s a funny one,” he decided. “Rich and spoiled, I guess. Used to having her own way and carrying out any old whim that strikes her. There wasn’t a real reason in the world why she needed to have a special boat sent for her in the morning instead of coming on board tonight like the others.”

Afterward Erica always insisted that she went to sleep that night without a conscious thought, at least, of the impulsive, crazy plan she was to plunge into before sunrise the next morning. As far as she could trace it, it began with a singularly vivid dream.

She dreamed the romantic lady passenger with the jolly voice came to her, offering her a suit of boy’s clothing and saying, persuasively, “My nephew couldn’t go, after all. Can’t you wear these clothes of his and go in his place? Then Tommy won’t be so lonely.”

In addition, the lady had pointed at Erica’s red bob, and had asked, triumphantly: “Isn’t this really what you cut off your curls for? Remember that Captain Bartlet himself told you once you’d probably want to run away to sea in his ship one day?”

Erica found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding in her breast until it was almost a pain. A broad path of moonlight was shining in the windows and fell on an awkwardly wrapped bundle lying on the floor near the foot of her bed.

“Tommy will be unhappy without some one to keep him cheered up,” Erica said aloud, wildly, in a scarey little voice that didn’t sound a bit like her own. “And maybe Sun Li would do more for me, if I were there in Canton—than for Tommy or Captain Bartlet.”

She kept on staring at Tommy’s pathetic bundle as if it fascinated her. She tried to pull her eyes away, and couldn’t.

“If I—dressed up—in those clothes,” Erica whispered, slowly, her mouth dry, “and went to Mrs. Haven, pretending to be a boy who wanted to stow away and go to China, to—to my godfather who lives there—Tommy said she’s silly and—and romantic. I bet she’d think it exciting, and take me on board as her nephew. I wouldn’t tell a lie—anyhow not in words. I wouldn’t have to say I was a boy—and—and after the ship sailed, Captain Bartlet could only scold. He wouldn’t turn back.”

CHAPTER VIII

Slowly Erica got out of bed and went over to the bundle Tommy had left with her earlier that evening. Her hands were cold and shook a little, so that she bungled the knots clumsily as she untied the string, but her mind was firmly made up to attempt the reckless plan which had come to her with her first waking from that very vivid dream. She was going to China on the Spray, if the thing could be contrived, to have a share in the search for Lis.

She took Tommy’s discarded suit out of the bundle and held it up in the moonlight. It was too small for Tommy and would probably be too big for her, but it would have to do.

Fifteen minutes later a slim, red-headed boy, wearing a rather battered old cap and Tommy’s coat and trousers, and carrying a bundle under one arm which contained a girl’s frock, a red, woolly cape, and a bonnet, stole on tiptoe out of the room, down the front stairs, and out of Cousin Kate Kingsley’s front door into the raw, penetrating chill of five o’clock of an April morning.

It was still quite dark in the street—darker, as a matter of fact, than last evening, because the street lamps were out now. Erica shivered, partly with cold—for Tommy had left her no overcoat—and partly with sheer nervous excitement at the rash adventure to which she was committed.

She had hidden under her pillow a hasty, much-blotted note to Aunt Callie, telling of her undertaking. Some one would find it when they made her bed, but not soon enough to stop Erica herself from boarding the Spray—that is, supposing she succeeded in prevailing upon Mrs. Haven to stand sponsor for her.

It was only a five-minute walk from Cousin Kate’s to the big, red-brick house she remembered so vividly from last evening. Lights were burning brightly in all the front windows, upstairs and down, as Erica turned the corner, and a handsome carriage and pair stood before the door, already well laden with various sized and shaped bags and boxes.

For a long moment Erica debated, standing irresolutely on the corner, whether to go up boldly, ring the bell and proffer her astounding request, or to wait until the lady came out on her way to the carriage.

While she still argued with herself, Erica saw a portly coachman descend from the box and mount the house steps, probably for a final load of luggage. Opportunity beckoned, and without stopping to debate further, she impulsively answered the summons.

Hurrying down the street, she cast one last frightened glance over her shoulder at the lighted house behind her, and, opening the carriage door with a quick jerk, popped into the darkness inside like a terrified rabbit scuttling into its burrow.

The carriage was pretty well filled with bags, save for a corner of the back seat which had been left free for the traveler. But Erica was a slender girl, and she managed, by pulling and pushing the boxes a bit, to slip into a sort of niche on the floor between a huge dressing-case and what felt like a small-sized trunk standing on one end.

For a few seconds after she had gained this temporary hiding-place Erica was quite unable to make out sounds around her because of the loud pounding of her own heart in her ears. But after a while this quieted down and she could hear two people coming down the stone steps of the house toward her.

One of these must be the portly coachman, she decided, for she heard a man’s voice; then still another box or bag was piled up on the driver’s seat, and some one opened the carriage door and put a foot on the step.

“Pretty crowded in here, Jeffreys,” Erica heard the rich, chuckly voice of Mrs. Haven remark, and a hand came into the darkness exploringly.

“Want I should move them bags round a little, ma’am?” the man Jeffreys asked, and Erica’s heart fell to pounding again, lest his offer be accepted and her own inevitable discovery result.

“No, never mind,” she heard the traveler say. “It’s not far to the wharf. I can squeeze in somewhere.”

Jeffreys, judging by the way the carriage rocked, thereupon mounted to the box, and Mrs. Haven climbed gingerly into the crowded darkness inside and sat down rather heavily in the vacant corner of the seat, which was, fortunately, the one farthest from Erica. There was a crack of Jeffreys’ whip, a creaking of protesting springs, and they were off.

Erica tried to marshal her jumbled thoughts into coherence and decide how best to make her presence and her position known. That matter, however, was taken out of her hands and decided for her by an unexpectedly severe jolt over uneven cobblestones, which flung her out of her hiding-place and across the intervening bags, bringing her up with her startled red head against her no less startled traveling companion’s knee.

Mrs. Haven screamed shrilly, clutching at her heart with one hand and Erica’s curls with the other. Luckily the noise of the creaking springs, the jouncing bags, and the clatter of their wheels over the cobblestones prevented old Jeffreys up in front from hearing his mistress’s shriek, and Erica spoke desperately before she could utter another.

“Please, ma’am, it’s—it’s all right. Only let me explain!” she implored.

The carriage was now crossing a wider thoroughfare, and the first gray light of dawn was brighter here than in the narrower streets hemmed in by houses. Not only outlines now, but some of the details of objects near at hand could be made out.

Mrs. Haven, her fingers still buried in Erica’s hair, pulled the latter’s head nearer the carriage window and stared at her piercingly. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she began to laugh. Of a truth there was nothing very alarming in the slim boyish figure crouched among the bags at her feet, or in the frightened face with its wide-open sea-blue eyes and mop of tangled red curls.

“Boy,” she said, trying to make her tone severe and not succeeding very noticeably, “how did you come in my carriage? And what on earth do you want? I am just starting off on a long journey to China and have no time to waste.”

“I—I want you to take me to China with you,” Erica gasped. “I knew you were going. I overheard you talking to that ship’s boy last evening in front of your house. I—heard you speak of wishing you had decided to take your nephew. Couldn’t—couldn’t you just get me on board the ship by pretending I’m in your charge, and keep me with you till the ship’s under way? The captain won’t turn back then to put me ashore and if I can only get to Canton I’ve got a godfather out there who will take care of me. Oh, please, please, ma’am, do help me! I somehow must get to China!”

The lady continued to stare at Erica in amazement—as well she might—at having a strange boy tumbled so suddenly into her carriage among her traveling-boxes, to utter a wild request like this, with lips and voice that trembled, and frank, unmistakably honest eyes that pleaded for him.

“Look here, boy,” Mrs. Haven asked, finally, weakening in spite of herself at the sight. “I suppose you’re in trouble of some kind, that you want to run away. But if you’ll give me your word it’s nothing—nothing dishonest or—bad you’ve done——” She paused uncertainly, and Erica took heart.

“I give you my word,” she said, solemnly, “I haven’t done anything wrong—not in the way you mean it,” she added, hurriedly, for her conscience was already beginning to prick her a little as to how Aunt Charity and her father would view her action when they came to learn of it.

“Where’s your mother?” Mrs. Haven demanded next. But this time her hand patted Erica’s hair relentingly.

“She died when I was born,” Erica said. “Wait—maybe I’d better tell you why I have to go.” And as they jolted noisily along, she poured out the tale of Lister’s mysterious disappearance and of her Chinese godfather who was their only hope now of getting news of the boy. She kept back prudently the fact that Tommy was already sailing on the self-same errand; that her father was captain of a clipper ship plying back and forth to China, who might be supposed entirely capable of handling any search necessary; and, last and most vital of all, she gave no hint that should correct Mrs. Haven’s belief in the genuineness of her masquerading.

“You look awfully young to go to sea,” the other said, doubtfully, at the end of the tale, but her black eyes had quickened into eager interest as the various Arabian Nights aspects of the situation were skillfully set forth by Erica’s nimble tongue. A lost cousin, a mysterious Chinese godfather, the seal ring with the strange Chinese characters Lis had worn away—it sounded to kindly, foolish Mrs. Haven like something from one of the romantic and always highly improbable novels she reveled in.

“I’m fifteen,” Erica informed her truthfully. “And I’m quite strong. I always have been.”

“Well, you don’t look much more than eleven or twelve,” Mrs. Haven demurred. “But I’ll do my best to get you on board. I’ll say you’re a young friend I’m responsible for taking out to his relatives in Canton. That’ll be literally true. I couldn’t tell a lie, of course. Here we are now, at the wharf. You let me do the talking, and we’ll come through right enough.”

The carriage drew to a stop and Jeffreys, descending from his box, opened the door. The sight of a pretty red-headed boy sitting on the boxes inside, where apparently no boy had been at the start of the short ride, caused the rather prominent eyes of Jeffreys to appear to be trying suddenly to leap from their sockets. He looked from Erica to his mistress, blinked, attempted to speak, and choked instead.

“Oh, Jeffreys, I believe I did not tell you this young gentleman was coming with us,” Mrs. Haven had the presence of mind to say quickly. Jeffreys blinked again.

“No—eh—no, ma’am,” he agreed, meekly.

It was indubitably a true statement of facts, although it explained nothing of his very natural bewilderment. Still, Mrs. Haven was not a lady who was much given to explaining, so Jeffreys, after a third stare at the calm-faced Erica, turned rather red and began taking out the bags and boxes in silence.

It was quite light on the wharf now, and Mrs. Haven stood by the carriage, her eyes scanning the dark harbor water anxiously, for she was not a good sailor and was mortally afraid of trusting herself in small boats.

Then with a little cry of delight she caught at Erica’s arm, pointing. “There’s that nice young man the captain sent ashore last night to tell me what time to be at the wharf,” she exclaimed. “How polite of him to come to meet me this morning.”

Erica, following the plump, pointing finger, half shrank behind the rotund figure of her benefactress, and felt her heart go—flop—down into the regions of her boots at one plunge.

This was the very worst luck that could have met her at the outset of her adventure. No possible chance of deceiving Tommy either as to her identity or as to his own cast-off garments she was wearing. If the Spray had been moored to the wharf she might have succeeded in slipping by him and up a gangplank unnoticed. But with a trip in the Spray’s boat, with all of them huddled together in the closest of quarters, she had just no chance at all. And very well she knew how Tommy would look upon her present expedition, and what he would do. If only she could have avoided meeting him until the Spray was heading out to sea, he would have had, perforce, to make the best of the situation.

Her glance went huntedly behind her for an avenue of escape. If Tommy need never know! But if she pulled away from Mrs. Haven’s hand on her arm and ran, there might be a regular hue and cry after her. That red-faced Jeffreys would be certain to put the worst possible construction on her flight. She was sure he was a little suspicious of her presence there, as it was.

Despairingly she heard Mrs. Haven hail Tommy in friendly fashion, and saw the boy jump briskly to his feet from the piece of timbering on which he had been sitting, talking to another boy in sea-going garb, whose back was turned to Erica.

Wave after wave of burning red swept across the girl’s face. Another instant now, and Tommy would recognize her, would take in at a glance the meaning of her masquerade. Suddenly she seemed to see the whole silly, impulsive plan as not only Tommy, but Aunt Charity, Aunt Callie, and her own father would view it. The kind of reckless, troublesome, unconsidered plan a child makes, and rushes into headlong, without a thought for the consequences. And at fifteen one was not supposed to be that sort of child any more.

Tears of humiliation and disappointment blurred the blue eyes abruptly, so for a moment she could not see what was making Mrs. Haven, beside her, exclaim again in an astonished voice.

“La! my dear! and mercy me! Which on earth is which?” the plump good-natured widow was gasping excitedly. “Look, boy! Did you ever see two such peas in a pod before?”