Erica shook two big tears off her lashes impatiently, and looked inquiringly ahead of her as she was bid.

Then every bit of color went out of her face. She took an unsteady step forward, staring wildly at the two tall, long-legged youths in seafaring clothes who were striding jauntily down the wharf toward Mrs. Haven’s carriage, their arms flung across each other’s shoulders, their brisk feet keeping step.

Incredulously Erica continued to stare, wordlessly, as they came nearer; came as she had so often watched them cross the garden to Aunt Charity’s gate or come charging up Orange Street joyously, arms across each other’s shoulders as now, gay feet keeping step to some old familiar march whistled in an undertone; two young faces, flung back cockily, fresh and untroubled as the morning, and so exactly alike that at a distance even Erica herself sometimes couldn’t tell—Lis and Tommy! Lis—alive, safe, well—arm in arm with Tommy swinging up the Boston wharf here before her unbelieving eyes in the mellowing dawn of that April morning.

No wonder Erica, panting, a little dizzy between incredulity and sudden joy, dropped cap and bundle and, wrenching her arm from Mrs. Haven’s grasp, went running to meet the approaching pair as if she had suddenly donned the famous seven-leagued boots of the old fairy stories.

The astonished Mrs. Haven beheld the three figures—the two young sailors and her slim little red-headed protegé—meet like a whirling sandstorm, swing madly about in a circle, arms linked, feet executing a war-dance of fantastic steps, while three voices—two deep boyish ones and a surprisingly shrill treble—rose in a regular pæan of jubilee. The deep voices cried, “Ricky!” in varying tones of joyous amazement, and the shrill little treble soared above them both, with “Lis! Lis! It’s Lis!”

Then the whirling circle broke, and the three, their hands still clasped, stood back and surveyed one another with a dozen eager questions plainly burning the tips of their eager tongues.

“Lis, how did you get here?” Erica begged, earnestly. “Surely Tommy didn’t know yesterday——”

“Of course I didn’t,” Tommy broke in, quickly. “You can’t imagine I wouldn’t have told mother if I had known.”

He broke off in his turn, and the twins stared hard at their strangely metamorphosed young cousin. Lis’s eyes were curious and a trifle amused, but Tommy’s mouth set in a new grim line.

“Rick,” the latter said with abruptness, “what are you doing down here at this hour, in those old clothes of mine?”

Erica crimsoned. So it had come at last, only now she must face both twins instead of just Tommy. She would never hear the end of this rash escapade; she knew that.

“Won’t you please tell me about Lis first?” she begged, trying to stave off confession.

“No,” Tommy declared, bluntly, “we won’t. This other matter comes first.” His eyes narrowed with a swift suspicion. “Rick, you were never thinking of such a fool trick as trying to stow away on the Spray!” he cried, accusingly.

Erica sighed resignedly. “Yes, I was, if you must know it,” she assented. “I see now it was a crazy idea, and I vow, Tommy, I never really planned it. I first dreamed I was doing it, and I woke up and—and all at once there was the plan in my head, and the next thing I knew I was doing it——”

Mrs. Haven, full of curiosity and interest, had drawn nearer, and now her eyes widened and her mouth fell slightly open in her astonishment as the supposed red-headed boy she had intended taking under her wing on the voyage to China burst half coherently into the utterly dumfounding narrative of the past events of the morning hours.

“So—so you’re a girl!” she ejaculated. “Mercy on us! Whatever is the world coming to when nice, well-brought-up girls cut off their hair, put on boy’s clothes, and run away to sea! I think it was very naughty and deceitful of you to take me in so,” she concluded, indignantly. “What would your family have thought of me, when they found it out?”

But that was more than Lis’s soft heart could bear, directed at Erica. It was all well enough for Tommy and himself to scold and tease her when they saw fit, but no outsider and stranger could call Ricky deceitful while either Tommy or he stood by. Ricky’d been silly again—she was always getting into trouble by following her impulses too blindly—but she’d never told a lie or been intentionally deceitful in her life.

This, stammering a little in his earnestness, he endeavored to make clear to the chagrined Mrs. Haven, and at last, by convincing her that Erica’s story was entirely correct as far as it went and that he himself was the lost cousin, just returned from China safe and sound, he made her forget entirely her disapproval in a quick and generous delight at this happy ending of the tale.

“I won’t say another word,” she promised, “if you’ll let me hear how you got lost and then came to be found again. Haven’t we time before going on board?” She appealed wistfully to Tommy, who nodded assent.

“Well,” Lis began, “it’s really all due to Ricky, here, that they found out who I was, in the end. Yes”—he turned to Erica, whose face was glowing—”it was that seal ring of Sun Li’s you hung round my neck before I sailed. Remember? And by the way,” he added, explanatorily, “Sun Li’s not his real name at all. I suppose Captain Bartlet has told you he’s governor of Canton?” Erica and Tommy both nodded, and Lis resumed his story.

“It seems Uncle Eric once did a favor of some kind for Sun Li when they were both young men. That was before he was governor, of course. I don’t know what it was—the favor, I mean—but Sun Li’s never forgotten. Uncle Eric was trying to learn some Chinese at the time, and in his efforts to pronounce his new friend’s long and very unpronounceable name—I’ve heard it, of course, myself, but I can’t say it, either; it takes a Chinese tongue—well, as I was saying, ‘Sun Li’ was the nearest Uncle Eric could twist his own tongue to it, and they kept the name going as a sort of friendly joke between them. Then came that time when you, Ricky, were born at sea and Aunt Cecily died just as Uncle Eric’s ship was nearing Canton. Sun Li’s own little son died the same day, and he sent the child’s nurse to take care of you on the voyage home. But you and Tommy know that part of the story. Only, of course, all that made the friendship closer than ever between the two men.”

“Yes. Oh, Lis, go on, quick!” Erica breathed, her eyes shining. Mrs. Haven, her own face alight with interest, drew nearer and slipped a forgiving arm about Erica’s shoulders.

“Well, to skip ahead to the night I went ashore from the Spray to have a last look-see at the city of Canton,” Lis continued. “I had been paid that morning, and foolishly I took the money ashore with me in my pocket. Not that it was a big sum, of course, but any money looks big to those Chinese bandits. I had father’s gold watch on, too. I’ll know better another time. You can guess the rest. I wandered into a lonely-looking side street, quite far into the heart of the city, and that’s all I remember about it. Some thief, or thieves—I don’t know how many there were—must have jumped me from behind, out of one of those dark compound gateways. They got away with my money and the watch, but, luckily for me, they didn’t find Sun Li’s seal ring. It began to rain about that time, and I must have lain there in the street in the wet for maybe two hours, when a kind old, absent-minded Chinese scholar, jogging home in his sedan with his coolie bearers, found me and took me to his own house and nursed me like a Christian gentleman. I was out of my wits for days, what with the blow on my head the bandits had given me and a cold and fever I’d caught lying so long out in the rain.”

Both Erica and Mrs. Haven uttered little cries of horror and pity, and Tommy clenched both fists fiercely, but made no other comment.

“At first,” Lis took up his tale again, trying to laugh off the tragic air of the other three, “they didn’t find the ring, because the cord round my neck had broken and the ring itself was caught in the lining of my coat. The Professor—that’s what I called him, he really was a quite famous authority on Chinese history—lived so much by himself, he never heard of all the inquiries that were being made for me in the city. But one of the servants, in cleaning my coat, found the ring and brought it to him. The Professor recognized Sun Li’s seal and was quite frightened. So he sent it off in a hurry to the governor, relating how and where he had found it—and me. And of course after that it was all plain sailing. Sun Li sent for me when I was able to be up and about, and gave me an audience in the most gorgeous old hall, hung with silks and banners and smoking torches, that you’ve ever dreamed of. As the Spray had sailed the day before, he sent me home by the Lightning, Captain Culverson, you know—which was also sailing for Boston, luckily for us all, that same week. And here I am.”

“But—but”—Erica was stammering in her excitement—”but how did you come here this morning with Tommy?”

Lis pointed out into the harbor, past the Spray at her anchorage, to where a new clipper, her white wings furled and her tall masts raking the blue sky, lay at anchor.

“We got in late last evening,” he explained, “and it wasn’t till it was light this morning that I saw my own ship, the Spray, was right in the next berth, so to speak. So I got permission from Captain Culverson to be rowed over to the Spray bright and early, and, to my astonishment, found Tommy preparing to come ashore to meet a passenger, and came with him.”

”W-well!” Erica sighed. She was quite exhausted with emotion and the morning’s excitement. “It’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard of, Lis. But”—her forehead puckered suddenly—”but, Lis, which of you is sailing in the Spray this morning—you or Tommy? For I suppose one of you must go.”

“I am,” Tommy put in, quickly. “Lis has had one voyage, you know, and, besides, I was the one who was to have shipped in her originally.”

“And I guess Aunt Callie needs to have Lis near her for a while,” Erica put in, happily. “We all do. Oh, Lis, it’s been such a—a terrible time!”

Ten minutes later, a third and final good-by having been said to Tommy, he piloted his passenger into the Spray’s boat, and Lis and Erica, hand in hand like two children, walked back to Cousin Kate’s through Boston’s early-morning streets, now beginning to be astir with the traffic of the day.

“And sometime,” Lis was saying to an eagerly attentive Erica, “Sun Li wants your father to bring you out to Canton, to visit in the governor’s palace, Rick.”

Erica merely sighed blissfully. Words were beyond her. All her worries and troubles had broken like the early-morning mists about them, and the sun of a happy present and a joyously beckoning future was shining through.

CHAPTER IX

As they turned the corner into Mount Vernon Street, a new problem occurred to Erica. She stopped short and faced Lister ruefully.

“How are we going to get in without waking them?” she demanded. “Of course, when I slipped out this morning, I didn’t know I was coming back, so I never thought of leaving the door on the latch. If Cousin Kate and your mother have to know I tried to run away to sea, they’ll think I’m more hopeless than ever.” She caught at Lister’s coat sleeve beseechingly. “You don’t think I ought to tell them, as long as I didn’t? You see, they’d never understand. I’ll tell father when the Sea Gull gets back, and even if he doesn’t approve—and of course he won’t—he’ll understand I wasn’t just being naughty. That’s the beautiful thing about father, he sees into people’s real thoughts.”

Lis looked thoughtful for a moment. “No, I guess if you tell Uncle Eric, that’s enough,” he conceded. “There’s no sense in worrying the others. Now let’s put our heads together and try to think up a way to break in without rousing the house.”

They had reached Cousin Kate’s steps by this time, and stood there in the street, gazing up at the white-painted, closed door. The sun was almost up now, and the grey twilight of early morning was already shot with cheerful color. In a very little while the household would be astir. They had to think quickly if Erica’s escapade was to remain a secret.

Luck, however, was with them. A stronger puff of wind swept about the corner and the white door rattled under its onslaught, widened a crack, and then gently swung open before the astonished eyes of the girl and boy.

Erica uttered a little cry. “I don’t believe I pulled it quite to, after all,” she whispered, jubilantly. “Hurry and let’s slip in before anyone wakes. My! what a piece of good fortune! Only, I didn’t really deserve it,” she added, honestly, as they mounted the steps on tiptoe.

Standing in the dim hallway, Erica closed the door cautiously behind them, and motioned Lis toward the still darker parlor.

“Go in there and wait till they come down,” she commanded under her breath. “I’ll run up and get rid of these,” touching Tommy’s discarded suit rather shamefacedly.

She had scarcely gained her own room when she heard footsteps moving about on the floor below, where her aunt’s and Cousin Kate’s bedrooms were. Then some one, she was not sure which of the two it was, started down the stairs. Standing at her door, Erica listened breathlessly, and an instant later she heard a startled, incredulous cry from Aunt Callie.

”Lister! My darling boy!”

She heard Lis say, “Mother!” in a choked voice, and then there was silence for so long that Erica began to be frightened. Had Aunt Callie fainted, perhaps? She had been thoughtless not to have realized Lis’s mother should have been prepared for such a surprise. Aunt Callie had always been delicate.

She began to pull on her own clothes with hurried, shaky fingers, and made a clumsy bundle of Tommy’s suit, which she stuffed into the dim back of the big wardrobe. Then, still nervous and apprehensive of what she might find, she ran down the two flights of stairs to the first floor.

But she need not have been anxious. They say joy never kills, and Aunt Callie certainly looked very much alive and very happy, seated in the deep armchair before the grate fire, with Lister kneeling on the hearth beside her, blowing the coals gently with a huge bellows. Both heads turned at the sound of Erica’s footsteps, and Mrs. Folger held out her arms to the girl with a motherly gesture.

“Come and see the mercy the good Lord has vouchsafed us this day, my dear,” she said, tremulously. “Lister has been telling me the marvelous story of his escape, and of his ship getting in this morning in time for him to meet Tommy, before the Spray set sail.” She was so excited that she had not even thought of questioning how he had gained access to Cousin Kate’s house, Erica noted with deep thankfulness. But in the light of the greater interest of his story, it was no wonder lesser details seemed unimportant.

Before Erica had a chance to ask any of the questions Aunt Callie would be sure to expect of her, a happy diversion was caused by Cousin Kate’s entrance, and the whole thrilling tale had to be told over again for her benefit. Erica’s heart stopped thumping guiltily, and she and Lis exchanged glances of relief behind their elders’ backs.

“Isn’t it too bad Tommy couldn’t be here, too?” Cousin Kate said, regretfully. “But it was fortunate he had at least a few moments with his brother before sailing. He will go away with a mind at ease, at any rate. Now, who is ready for breakfast? There ought to be some heartier appetites this morning than we’ve seen so far.”

It was in the middle of an energetic attack on his fourth hot biscuit that Lis uttered an exclamation and laid down his knife.

“I’m forgetting all about old Sun Li’s message to Rick, here,” he declared. “And there’s a package, too. But the message comes first.”

He delved into several of his numerous pockets in turn before locating what he was in search of, but finally brought to light a slim oblong box, done up in the familiar orange paper and sealed with the queer gold seals they all knew.

Instead of handing it over to Erica’s eager, outstretched fingers, Lis grinned teasingly and shook his head. “I said the message came first,” he reminded her.

Erica made a face and then laughed. “All right,” she said. “What is it?”

“Well, I don’t believe I could repeat it word for word, for the life of me,” Lis confessed. “It was too high-flown and Chinese—not a word less than three syllables, and most of ‘em more. But the gist of the matter is that he’s longing to see his goddaughter, ‘The little Sea Girl,’ as he always refers to you. I’ve got a sort of idea, though he didn’t put this into actual words, that he associates you with his little dead son. You remember you were born on the same day. Anyhow, he even hinted that he might be induced to take a sea voyage himself—though the Chinese aren’t much on that, by custom. But he’s been in poor health for some time, and his doctors have done the unusual thing—from a Chinese viewpoint—of recommending a journey. However, that’s not the message. What he did ask me to tell you is that he begs your father will bring you to China in the Sea Gull, and that you will both visit him in his palace.”

A prolonged, ecstatic “Ah-h-h!” from Erica interrupted him here.

Lis nodded, his grin broadening. “Yes, ma’am, that’s the message. Also, that your rooms in the palace have been waiting for you for years, never occupied by anyone else, since his son died. And in the package I’m now about to hand you is the confirmation of this invitation.”

With a dramatic flourish Lis now handed over the gaudy, gold-sealed box, and Erica, snatching it, tore the coverings off with trembling fingers. Inside the orange paper was a tiny teak-wood box, about three inches long by an inch and a half wide. And inside that, on a bed of golden satin embroidered with lotus flowers, lay a thin silver key, banded with carved jade.

Erica lifted it out of the box with little cries of admiration and delight.

“You mean,” she gasped, “that this is the key of the rooms——”

”Your rooms, he told me to tell you,” Lis said, quite gravely, his teasing forgotten. “He showed them to me while I was there. The most utterly gorgeous place you ever dreamed of, Rick. Straight out of the Arabian Nights, I give you my word!”

Erica was staring at the lovely little key with dreaming eyes.

“This is the very nicest present he’s sent me yet,” she said with conviction. “Aunt Callie, do you suppose father will—Oh, he’s just got to! It would be something to remember and think about all the rest of my life, even when I’m an old, old lady.” She held the key out to her aunt. “Look at that exquisite flower pattern cut into the jade!” she exclaimed. “I believe I’ll wear it like a locket, on a black ribbon round my neck. It’s much too lovely to put away in a box.”

In a vague way Erica had dreamed of China and the possibility of her one day actually going there, ever since she could remember. But from the moment of her receiving Sun Li’s silver-and-jade key, her dreaming took on more definite form. Perhaps one reason for this was the fact of Lister’s having actually met her Chinese godfather and seen his wonderful old palace. Lis had done all the things she, Erica, had longed to do. He could describe them, too, and make every last, smallest detail vivid—for Lis was an observant boy, not like helter-skelter Tommy who could have given her none of the descriptions she clamored for.

Of course, for the first few days after they all returned to Nantucket, Erica did not have much time for planning for the future. It was enough just to have Lis back again, to hear him tell of his adventures by land and sea, and to realize that the past terrible weeks of suspense and fear were over forever.

There was so much to tell of what had happened during the months he had been gone. First and foremost, of course, he must be introduced to his two new adopted sisters, Milly and little Barbee Thorne.

It was no surprise to Erica that Lis should promptly lose his heart to Baby Barbee—everyone else in the family and the neighborhood had already done the same thing. But it did surprise, and perhaps—such being the way we erring humans seem to be inclined—disappoint her a little, too, when she found he did not share Tommy’s and her own dislike of the sullen-eyed, decidedly unfriendly Milly.

Of course at the time Captain Bartlet had brought the dreadful news of Lis’s disappearance, Milly had unexpectedly risen to new, sympathetic comprehension of other people’s sorrows and feelings. Both Tommy and Erica had experienced a sudden swift remorse for what they then began to regard as their unfair judgment of the girl. But the mood—since it seemed nothing more on Milly’s part—gradually wore away, and even in the few days that had elapsed before Erica and Aunt Callie had left for Boston to see Tommy off, Milly had slipped back into her usual black-browed, unsmiling aloofness whenever she was with her younger cousins. True, her new gentleness had persisted where Aunt Callie was concerned; but then, no one, not absolutely stony-hearted, could have seen delicate little Mrs. Folger in her repressed, uncomplaining agony over her missing son, and not at once have lost himself or herself in considering her.

CHAPTER X

“Look here, Rick, what’s all this nonsense between you and Milly?” Lis asked this direct question a trifle impatiently, about a week after his return to Nantucket. Up to then he had made no comments, sought for no information on a situation that unfortunately could not fail to be obvious to anyone thrown much with the two girls.

According to his usual quiet, self-contained fashion, Lis had looked on for a time, until he felt fairly certain of the correctness of his observations, and had then made an opportunity to have a talk with Erica alone. He had suggested a walk across the commons to the South shore—their favorite tramp that led through the stretch of stunted pine woods Erica had long ago christened the Owls’ Country.

It was a wonderful spring morning, the wind fresh and bracing from the north, the air crisp with sea salt and that indescribable early-spring smell of wakening green things, and sweet, sun-warmed earth. The cousins had talked of every-day matters on the walk to the shore, but when they emerged on the wide, yellow stretch of beach that rose into dunes on one hand and sloped down to green, white-topped breakers on the other, Lis fell silent. He stood still, staring out to sea rather wistfully for a moment—as if, Erica thought, he were remembering his brief clipper voyagings. Then, swinging about, he asked his question regarding Milly Thorne abruptly.

The suddenness of it took Erica by surprise, and the unwonted impatience of his tone astonished her even more. It sounded a little—incredible notion—as if Lis were actually put out about something; as if it mattered to him whether Erica and Milly got on well together, or didn’t.

Erica’s own temper, never too securely in leash, slipped into view in a quick little flash of indignation peeping out of her blue eyes. Her red head lifted a half inch or so, and her chin took on the squarer, stubborn look that presaged an argument.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she retorted. “If you’ve noticed that we’re not bosom friends, well—that’s perfectly true. But I don’t see why you should call it nonsense. We’ll never be awfully fond of each other, I guess. We’re—we’re too different. Milly’s so bored and uninterested in things all the time, I lose my patience with her entirely. I—I just can’t understand her a bit.”

“Do you try to?” Lis asked, bluntly.

Erica bit her lip to keep back the sharp words that rushed to her tongue’s tip. She loved her cousin dearly, and up to a very few days ago she had feared never to see him again, so she was resolved not to let herself be angry with him now, no matter how unreasonable he might choose to be. Still, it was a shock—and a highly unpleasant one—to find Lis undertaking to champion Milly, who had brought all her present unpopularity on her own head, as Tommy, or any of their special little group of boys and girls, could have told him.

“I did try, Lis,” she said, after those two or three seconds of struggle with herself. “So did Tommy. When Milly first came last winter, I mean. But she showed us all pretty plainly that she didn’t care for our company, or our fun or our friends. At school she doesn’t make friends, either—only with teacher. It’s a pity I know, but—you can’t keep on forcing yourself on somebody; you’ll have to admit that.”

“I—see,” Lis said, slowly. “I guess there’s a big misunderstanding somewhere, Ricky. You’re not the sort to be unfair to a strange girl, particularly when she’s in trouble over losing her mother and her home like poor Milly. Neither is Tommy. Too bad, though. She seems to me a—kind of a sweet girl, if she’d only open up and talk a little about what’s worrying her, instead of moping round in corners, thinking of it, whatever it is, all the time. Say, look at that wave coming in!” he added, changing the subject without waiting for Erica’s reply. “Be ready to run, Rick; she’s sure coming clear up the beach to the dunes.”

In the breathless, laughing dash for higher ground that followed—for the wave did wash far up the beach as Lis had predicted—there was no chance for words of any sort, and when the two had scrambled up to the dune-top they had both forgotten, temporarily at least, their short-lived irritation with each other.

They tramped for several miles down the beach after that, discussing China now, for the most part, and the absorbing possibility of Sun Li’s really coming to Nantucket one day in the future, or the still more exciting one of Captain Eric’s taking Erica to visit in those closed, palace rooms to which she wore the little silver-and-jade key about her neck.

That evening after supper, while Mrs. Folger was upstairs putting little Barbee Thorne to bed, Lis from his deep chair at one side of the hearth (spring evenings on Nantucket are quite cold enough for open fires), looked over with troubled eyes at a slight, black-frocked little figure curled up in the big chair just across from him, apparently absorbed in a book. It came over the boy that he seldom saw Milly in the house without a book for company—for her sole company; that was the pitiful part of it.

Safe in her evident unawareness of his very presence in the room, Lis studied the bent head with its smooth, thick braids of hair that looked in the firelight like lustrous black satin. Milly’s big, rather sulky dark eyes—her only real claim to beauty—were hidden by her lashes as she read, and the un-childish, thin young face seemed thinner and whiter than ever in the alternate play across it of fireshine and shadow. Lis felt his heart contract a little at the sight. She looked, he thought suddenly, like a lost and miserable black kitten; one that had been starved, as well as frightened pretty badly about something.

Of course Milly wasn’t physically starved in his mother’s hospitable house and at her bountiful table. And surely, since coming to the island at least, nothing could have actually frightened the girl. It must be some experience that had happened before Milly came to them, Lis decided, knitting his brows indignantly at the notion. Some one had been unkind—not just that foolishness of Erica’s and Tommy’s, of course. No, this was something big and real that was hanging about Milly’s poor little thin neck like a veritable Pilgrim’s pack. Well, then, if that were so, since no one else appeared to be trying to do anything about it, he was going to have a crack at it himself. She couldn’t do any more than snap at him as he’d heard her do to Ricky.

He put down his own book quietly, and leaned back in his chair.

“Milly,” he said as casually as he could, for he was suddenly a bit shy over what he was doing, now that he’d made up his mind. Suppose she thought him just plain impertinent, instead of friendly.

Milly’s dark eyes came up from her reading and regarded him with an unmistakable impatience, waiting for him to continue.

Lis felt his face grow red, and hoped the glow of the flames would account for it, if the girl across the hearth noticed. But he went on with his self-appointed task bravely.

“I’ve been doing some thinking.” Lis had a nice smile that very few people failed to respond to. He smiled now, and almost reluctantly a little flicker of answering friendliness softened the sharp black eyes watching him. “I wasn’t home when you and Barbee came to us,” he went on, encouraged by the change in her expression, slight as it was. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here then. But it was certainly mighty jolly to come home and find myself with two brand-new sisters. I’ve been wanting to tell you that I appreciate the company and help you’ve been to mother. She tells me you’ve taken over all the mending, and that you’ve even made over one of her dresses so it looks like new. That—that was real good of you, Milly. Mother hasn’t ever had much money for clothes, and she was as pleased as could be the way you made that black silk look.”

He didn’t think it was only the firelight that caused that warm sweep of color across Milly Thorne’s pinched little face. Her book slid off her lap unnoticed, and she sat up straighter in the big chair.

“I like to sew,” was all she said, however. “My—mother taught me when I was so little I could hardly hold a needle. I—kind of enjoy making over things—making them pretty, you know. It’s nothing to thank me for.”

“Say, you’re all off your reckoning there,” Lis said, his smile broadening. “Don’t you really know that’s the nicest way folks can do favors for you—as if it was something they enjoyed?”

Milly considered this in silence for a moment or two; then her grave face lighted with a smile so quick and brilliant that it was transfiguring.

“Why, I never thought of it like that,” she said. “But I guess you’re right.” She looked at Lis thoughtfully, that new, warm smile still curling up the corners of her lips. “I’m glad you are going to be here instead of Tommy,” she announced, unexpectedly. “He and Erica don’t like me, but I sort of think maybe—maybe you might let me be your friend.” That last was said so humbly and wistfully, without any of her usual sharpness and discontent, that the boy was genuinely touched.

“You bet I’ll let you be my friend, Milly,” he said, decidedly. “You just count on me, and when you feel homesick, or things—go kind of wrong, you come and tell me about it. See? It always helps a lot if you can talk your worries over with some one. And I know,” he added, more awkwardly, “that Ricky and Tom will want to be your friends, too, if you’d only give ‘em an idea you’d meet them halfway. I guess they think you don’t like them, either.”

To this Milly made no answer, but as she did not argue the point Lis felt encouraged.

“I know what homesickness is,” he volunteered after a second little silence had fallen between them. “I would have given most anything at times, on that voyage to China, to be back here on Orange Street. You see, I’d never been away from home before, and I missed everyone—specially Tom.”

“It isn’t all homesickness with me,” Milly said, honestly. “I haven’t a nice disposition, really. If I know people round me love me and want me with them, why I—I’d do just anything for them. I always thought of my mother first, and I do now of Barbee, and—and I’m fond of Cousin Callie. But—it’s a horrid feeling,” she burst out, vehemently, her face flushing hotly, “to know you’re not wanted—that you’re only in the way, and—and that you’re—dependent on—on charity for your food and home and—and clothes. Mother didn’t leave any money for Barbee and me. Poor little mother, she worked hard at dress-making up to the very last, to keep a roof over our heads. I used to wish so hard I was a few years older, so I could earn money, too—somehow. Of course, uncle helped as much as he could, but he has only his pay as mate on a packet, you know, and there are others in the family to call on him, too.”

Lis’s face was very grave and sympathetic.

“Yes, that was hard—seeing your mother troubled about money, I mean,” he agreed. “We haven’t much ourselves, but we’re—not poor. We’ve got our home, and mother has a small income, and some day Tom and I’ll be earning more, of course. So you mustn’t ever feel you and Barbee are any burden. It doesn’t cost us anything to have you two sleep in the house—now, does it? Be sensible,” he urged, anxiously. “And you more than pay for the little you eat, by helping mother as you do with the housework and the sewing. You’re not—not dependent at all, Milly Thorne. I think that’s an unkind word to use between relations—truly I do.”

“Well, all the same,” Milly said, stubbornly, though she smiled at him again with a flash of gratitude in the big, troubled eyes, “I do wish there was some way I could earn even a little bit, so at least I’d know I was paying for part of what we cost Cousin Callie.”

“Mother wouldn’t like to have you feel that way, if she knew,” Lis reminded her.

Milly appeared to hesitate as if deliberating her next words. Then suddenly she pulled the big armchair nearer, and leaned toward the boy.

“Lis, I—I do know of a way I—could earn something—not much, but—something,” she breathed, her thin hands clasping and unclasping each other in her lap as she talked. “If I told you—asked you to help me and—and keep it a secret from—everyone—even Cousin Callie, and—Erica—would you promise?”

Lis looked a little doubtful. “But I don’t know what it is, you see,” he pointed out, coloring. “Maybe——”

“There’s nothing wrong in it—you’ll agree when you hear,” Milly broke in, feverishly. “But I—don’t want anyone to know till I’ve proved I can do it—successfully. If you think it’s something your mother would really mind, of course you can tell her. But will you promise not to, otherwise?”

“Sure, that sounds fair enough,” Lis assented, heartily. “Go ahead; I’m all ears.”

But in spite of his flippant words his tone was kind, and the friendly sympathy in his face not to be mistaken. Milly drew a long, relieved breath, and put her hand impulsively on his coat sleeve.

“I guess we—we are going to be friends, Lis,” she said, gratefully, and turned her head at the sound of footsteps behind her.

Lis, following with his own glance the direction of hers, swung about in his chair as Erica burst into the sitting room in her usual headlong hurry.

“Aunt Charity’s sick,” the latter announced in a tone that shook slightly from running and alarm combined. “Where’s Aunt Callie, Lis? I think she’d better come over, if she can.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lis said, jumping up, his expression full of concern. “What’s the matter, Rick? She was all right this afternoon, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, she seemed to be,” Erica agreed, dubiously. “But I guess she wasn’t letting on how she felt. Right after supper she had a funny sort of faint turn—took me most ten minutes to bring her to. I was awfully scared, I can tell you. But she’s in bed now, and doesn’t want me to send for the doctor. So I thought I’d better come over and tell your mother.”

“I’ll call her,” Lis offered, and pulled his chair closer to the hearth. “Sit down here, Rick; you’re all worked up and excited. I’m sure there’s nothing really to worry about,” he added. “Don’t most women faint?” he asked, naïvely.

Erica laughed scornfully. “Not Aunt Charity. That’s what scared me. I don’t believe she ever did such a thing before in her whole life. You ask Aunt Callie to hurry down, please. I don’t want to leave her alone over there longer than I can help.”

Milly had tried valiantly to feel a proper anxiety, but she was sharply disappointed at having her talk with Lis interrupted just at the crucial point when he had seemed ready to pledge his aid to her still unexplained plan. Her own mother had often fainted, so it did not strike her as particularly alarming to hear of Miss Charity’s sudden collapse. Of course she’d be all right in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. But if only—only it hadn’t had to happen at just this special moment!

She directed a pleading glance at Lis as he passed her chair, and spoke in a half whisper.

“May I tell you my plan when you come back, Lis? After your mother and Erica go, I mean? I do need advice awfully, and—there doesn’t seem to be anyone else who cares what I do.”

Lis nodded, smiling down into the raised, tense young face with his gentlest expression. Milly looked particularly like a forlorn and lost black kitten at that moment, and all that was chivalrous and kindly in the boy responded to the appeal.

“‘Course you can,” he said. “But we all care, really, Milly, and want to help. You’ll find that out some day.”

Erica’s quick ears had caught every word of Milly’s whispered plea and Lister’s low-toned, emphatic rejoinder, and her own eyes opened a little wider with a touch of curiosity, that was swiftly followed by resentment. So Milly Thorne was having secrets with Lis already. Probably telling him long tales of how Tommy and she and the rest of their little group left her out, and abused her. And that very afternoon when she—Erica—had tried to tell him the real version of the difference between them, he hadn’t agreed with a word she’d said; had tried to talk about Milly being a “sweet girl” and misunderstood, and similar ridiculous nonsense. It was really too bad of old Lis. Stupid, too. If Tommy were only at home, they’d be able to make him see, together, that Milly had actually started in repelling all friendly advances from the very start.

Erica looked rather defiantly over at Milly, still curled up comfortably in her chair, and debated whether or not to come right out with a straightforward question or two. It might clear the air a bit, if she did. But the swift thought of Aunt Charity alone at home, sick, and needing her, decided her to postpone the discussion she foresaw any opening of the subject would be sure to entail.

She hesitated, bit her lip, and began, half-heartedly, “Milly—I——”

Milly had bent over to pick up her dropped book, and she did not trouble to look up at the sound of her name.

“Well?” she asked, coolly, sitting up at last, a trifle flushed, and apparently more absorbed in straightening some crumpled page corners than in anything Erica might choose to say.

“Oh—nothing,” Erica returned in a flat tone, and sprang to her feet in relief as her aunt entered the room, followed by Lis. She was suddenly and vehemently surer than ever that never had she met so disagreeable and utterly aggravating a girl as this dark, silent, aloof young person with whom she was expected to live on terms of close intimacy for perhaps years and years to come.

And then, swiftly, she remembered Aunt Charity again, and catching at Mrs. Folger’s arm with cold, frightened fingers, hurried her out of the house and across the lawn next door. The petty annoyance of Milly’s unfriendliness was completely swallowed up for the time being in the larger worry.

CHAPTER XI

Much against Miss Charity Folger’s will, her sister-in-law insisted on sending Lis for the doctor.

“Maybe it’s nothing but being overtired, as you say, sister,” she observed, wisely, “but it won’t do a speck of harm to hear what the doctor thinks. You run on over to Doc Spencer’s, Lister, and fetch him back with you.”

Dr. Spencer, who had known the whole Folger family since the elder members of it were the ages of Erica and Lis themselves, arrived promptly a few minutes later, and proceeded to make a careful examination of Miss Charity. At the end of it he sat back in the straight chair by the bed, and looked gravely from his patient to Mrs. Callie Folger.

“There’s nothing to be scared about, if we take care,” he said at length, in reply to the two pairs of inquiring eyes fastened on his face. “But ye’ve got to make up your mind to take a good rest, Miss Charity, and there’s the long and short of it. I was never one to mince matters with my patients. Better tell the truth plainly, and then everybody knows where they stand.”

“It’s—my heart, Doctor?” Miss Charity asked, steadily.

He nodded kindly. “It’s not acting just like I’d prefer to have it,” he admitted. “Still, there’s nothing so serious rest an’ care can’t set it right. But no more housework, or runnin’ upstairs and down—for the present at any rate. Let Ricky, here, take the helm. She’s ‘most a woman now. Ain’t ye, young lady?” he demanded, swiftly, of Erica, with a smile. She was a great favorite of his, and he invariably took her side when her aunts deplored, in his hearing, her tomboy ways, which were so unlike what was considered fitting and ladylike in that day and generation, for a girl.

“Of course I’ll take care of her, Doctor,” Erica spoke up, sturdily. “I can dust and sweep well enough, if I have to, and I love to cook—so I’ll be all right there, in any case.”

“Oh, but Erica must go to school till the term ends,” Miss Charity said with all her old firmness, half raising herself from the pillow. “Callie and I’ll talk things over—make other arrangements—” Her voice grew less steady and sure of itself, and with the last word trailed off into a rather breathless murmur.

“There—that’s just what I won’t have, Miss Charity,” Dr. Spencer said, quickly and decidedly, leaning forward to force her gently back on the pillows. “You’re to keep still, and not worry. There’ll be somebody in the village we can get to come and stay here while Ricky’s at school. Just wait a bit till I mull over the list of lone females of my acquaintance.” He grinned cheerfully, but both ladies were too troubled to meet his humor, and made no reply.

Silence descended on the room for a moment, and then Mrs. Folger leaned toward her sister-in-law, her face full of a half-pleading, half-eager triumph.

“I’ve got it, sister,” she declared. “You must rent this house to Sally Gardiner’s daughter. You know she’s been hunting high and low for something here on Orange Street near her mother. And she’s well fixed, since her marriage, to pay a good price for it, too. Then you and Erica can come to me.”

“Hooray!” burst out Lis, irrepressibly, flashing his mother an approving glance. “That’s the best notion I ever heard! Now, then, Doctor, tell Aunt Charity that’s your prescription, and that she’s to take it quietly, like a sensible woman.”

“It’s exactly what I will do, Lis,” Dr. Spencer concurred, in high delight. “Never heard of a better-worked-out plan, myself. And Sara’ll be as pleased as all the rest of us. I’ve heard her say, many’s the time, this was the homeiest, most comfortable house in the whole of town. So that’s settled, and I’ll—with your permission, Miss Charity—just drop in at old Mrs. Gardiner’s on my way home, and tell them both the house’s in the market. Sara’ll jump at it like a hungry trout at a fly.”

He got to his feet, and stood rocking back and forth on his flat-toed shoes, ponderously, surveying the little group before him with a beaming smile.

Miss Charity returned the smile doubtfully, her eyes going to Mrs. Folger questioningly. “Do you really think it wise, Callie?” she asked. “It will make so much extra work for you—and you not any too strong, either. But I’ll own I’d be easier in my mind.” She turned a little, and Mrs. Folger bent over, with rare demonstration, and laid her hand on the thin, bony one resting on the coverlet.

“Of course you would, and so would I—a hundred times easier,” she said. “Besides, with two strong girls like Milly Thorne and Erica in the house to help me, and Lis here for the heavy chores, there won’t be a mite of difference in the work, so far as I’m concerned. That’s a right clever idea of yours, Doctor, to stop in and tell Sara and her mother tonight, before they have a chance to decide on anything else. Sister and I’ll be much obliged to you. The quicker I get her over in the big four-poster in my front room, the happier I’ll be. I’ll have another bed moved into the east room, where Milly sleeps, for Erica. It’s plenty big enough for two girls, though I always hold with folk each having a bed to themselves, if it’s anyway possible.”

A look of startled dismay peeped out of Erica’s sea-blue eyes as she listened to these plans being made for her, and her lips parted involuntarily as if to protest. Then with a glance at Aunt Charity’s pale face on the pillow, with that new, relieved little smile hovering about her mouth, she resolutely swallowed the words she had been about to utter, and sat silent, staring at the carpeted floor unseeingly. This was no time to trouble poor Aunt Charity; and certainly Aunt Callie was doing the best she could in stretching her none-too-large house to accommodate all the extra guests who had unexpectedly descended upon it in the past year. And her plan seemed the only practicable solution.

“You—you’re awfully good to us, Aunt Callie,” she forced herself to say, though a bit tremulously. “I promise I’ll do all I can to make it up to you.”

And so, all in a minute, the new plan was decided on, and the old familiar life she had known up to now was changed beyond recall. Ordinarily, of course, Erica would have found nothing to regret or dread in the idea of living in the same house with Aunt Callie and Lis, but the presence of Milly as a member of that household, and to have to share her room with her—and Erica had never had a room-mate before—was not so pleasant a prospect.

Dr. Spencer’s prediction that Sara Gardiner would jump at the chance to acquire Miss Charity’s house was a true one. Indeed, so eager was she to move in as speedily as possible, that the end of the following week saw Miss Charity and Erica duly installed in their new home, and the old gray house next door occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Ned Wills—Mrs. Wills being the married name of Sara Gardiner.

Somewhat to Erica’s surprise, Milly was unusually gracious about the new plan. She did not show by so much as a look that she resented—if she did resent it—having a room-mate thrust upon her unexpectedly. She cleared out half of the big wardrobe, without being asked, for Erica’s clothes, and moved the deepest and most comfortable chair over to the latter’s side of the room. Altogether Milly seemed a changed girl, quite suddenly. She did not sulk in corners now, though she continued to be, as always, a voracious reader when not busy with the various household duties that were her share. Erica noticed, too, that Milly appeared to be rather mysteriously excited about something—she went about the house with a most novel air of importance, and Erica came on her whispering with Lis once or twice, both of them evidently highly elated, and so absorbed in their topic of conversation they didn’t notice Erica’s presence in the room.

It was the first time Erica had ever been shut out from a share in anything that interested the twins, and the experience was not a pleasant one. She had made all sorts of good resolutions with regard to Milly, on coming to live at Aunt Callie’s, and she heroically tried to carry them out now, even in the face of this latest provocation. But she wished a dozen times a day for Tommy’s hot-headed championship. Tommy would never have let her feel left out and lonely, as she was beginning to feel more and often as the days passed. It was not that Lis himself ever showed any difference in his usual brotherly manner toward her; it was the fact of his sharing a secret with Milly, especially when he knew how Erica felt toward the other girl. She had finally come to persuade herself that it was almost disloyal of Lis; and out of school hours, she made her duties as nurse for Aunt Charity the excuse for keeping more and more out of both Milly’s and Lister’s way whenever she could.

Milly certainly noticed Erica’s new course of action, even if Lis continued stupidly unobservant, and after a little while it seemed as if she were trying to retaliate in kind, for she began leaving more of the housework—the dusting, washing of dishes, and sweeping—to Erica, and slipping off with a book, or her sewing-box, to a certain corner of the big, raftered attic which had been given over to little Barbee for a playroom.

Of course it was part of Milly’s duties to keep a watchful eye on her baby sister, and see that she did not get into trouble or annoy any of the grown-ups in the household. Still, when Barbee was entertaining her small self peacefully in the attic, it didn’t seem as if it were actually necessary for Milly to sit up there idly, day after day, and play nurse. There was no way in which the child could hurt herself, and there was certainly nothing she could break or destroy among the heavy chests, trunks, and discarded furniture that crowded the old garret. No, Erica decided, with a flash of indignant self-pity—and this was an emotion as novel to the girl as the conditions which had called it forth—Milly was paying her back in her own coin, and with interest added. Life had suddenly become for Erica Folger a strange, unfamiliar, miserable affair.

Several weeks dragged by in this fashion, and then one evening Milly came in late for supper, her dark, fretful face so changed and softened by a sort of shy, triumphant happiness that everyone at the table involuntarily laid down spoons and forks and sat back to stare at her.

It was Lis who broke the second of silence by jumping to his feet and rushing round to thump Milly heartily on the back as if she had been Tommy himself.

“She liked ‘em?” he queried, unintelligibly to the rest of the household, who looked in amazement from Milly’s sparkling face to Lister’s, which had become, all of a sudden, equally radiant.

“She certainly did,” Milly responded, a faint dimple actually appearing beside her smiling mouth. It was a new Milly, a normal, happy, excited girl whom none of the family, except perhaps Lis, who seemed to be in her secrets, recognized. Milly almost danced up to the end of the supper table, and held out a shaking hand, palm upward, to Mrs. Folger.

“Look!” she demanded in a voice that shook too. “I earned it all myself. And I can make more. I’m going to pay for Barbee’s and my keep. I needn’t be a burden on even your kindness, dear Cousin Callie, though I know you’ve never felt it that, or—or made me feel it.” Stooping swiftly, she pressed her lips surprisingly to Mrs. Folger’s cheek, and then straightened in embarrassment, her own cheeks scarlet.

Lying on Milly’s outspread palm there was a new, shiny ten-dollar gold piece. Aunt Callie took off her spectacles, wiped them, and, replacing them on her nose, bent nearer to study this amazing sight more carefully.

“My dear child!” she ejaculated wonderingly. “Where did you come by that?”

“It’s all right, mother,” Lis broke in, hurriedly. “She earned it right enough, just as she told you. Here, let me tell ‘em, Milly! You’re so excited you can’t talk straight. Mother, Milly’s been fretting her head like a silly girl over the notion that she and Barbee are dependent on us, and maybe depriving you of things you would otherwise be able to buy. Such stuff! Imagine! the little those two eat!” Lis sniffed in high scorn, and Mrs. Folger, with a little cry of protest, reached up and impulsively gathered Milly into a motherly embrace.

“Well, anyhow,” Lis pursued, grinning approvingly at the two, “she did have that notion, and nothing I could do would talk her out of it. She said she simply had to make money somehow—at least enough to pay for their food and clothes. And she said she believed she could do that by sewing for folks. Seems several ladies here in town, who’ve seen the things she’s made for Barbee, have told her they’d give ‘most anything to have her do the same thing for their children. Mrs. Macy over on Pearl Street, for one, and Mrs. Hedley, and one or two others. Milly had some patterns, too, that her mother had had, of the latest styles for children this last year in Boston, and they wanted her to copy these for them. But Milly was afraid you wouldn’t let her, mother. Or that you’d be afraid she couldn’t do it well enough—or—well, that something would happen to stop her. So she asked me if I thought it would be very wrong if she did some little dresses for Mrs. Macy’s baby, without telling any of the family, till we saw how they turned out. And I urged her to go ahead.”

“Oh-h-h! so that’s what you were always slipping off up to the attic for!” Erica burst out, enlightenment coming to her. “You were doing the cutting out and sewing up there, where no one would see but Barbee, or ask questions.” Now that she knew the nature of the secret that had made her so miserable, she felt a sudden quick shame of her own grudging attitude during the last few weeks. Her cheeks were as red as Milly’s, now, though from a quite different emotion.

“Yes, and I’m so glad to be able to tell you all, at last, and explain,” Milly said, happily. “I made six dresses and little slips for the Macy baby—all wee tucks, and some fagoting and drawn-work. My! they were pretty, honestly! And I did two dresses, besides, for little Nettie Hedley. I got the money they paid me changed into this gold piece, because it seemed to me only gold was good enough to hand over to you, Cousin Callie, after all your goodness to Barbee and me!” Milly ended in a voice that broke on a strangled sob, and with a quick motion she turned, hiding her face on Mrs. Folger’s shoulder, much as Barbee herself might have done.

“Please say you don’t mind, Cousin Callie,” she whispered in a muffled voice. “I do love to sew, and it’s such fun knowing I’m making real money of my own! And I promise not to let it interfere with my lessons—you’ll find my marks are just as good as they used to be. I’ve only done the sewing in the times I read books in, before I took up making the dresses. And Mrs. Macy wants some sewing for herself, later, and there are two more baby outfits I’ve been asked to make this spring. Just think what riches!” she wound up blissfully. “I’ll have maybe as much as twenty dollars before summer comes if I get all the work that’s been offered me. You see, because the styles are new, and they like my ideas, and the way I sew, they’re willing to pay me well. I—I’m awfully happy, Cousin Callie.”

Erica spoke up, in a determined rush of shamed words. “If you are, I haven’t done much to help make you so, poor Milly. I’m feeling pretty sick at myself, and I want to say so right out.”

CHAPTER XII

Erica had never been one for half measures. With the surprising revelation of Milly’s plucky and pathetic attempt to be at least partially self-supporting, her former opinion of the girl had been suddenly and dramatically revised, and she was honest enough to want to make a frank apology. Being Erica, none but a vehement, self-accusatory one seemed adequate, and when she burst out impulsively with that “I’m just about sick at myself,” she meant every word of it. Milly’s black eyes glowed at the friendly warmth of the speech, but she shook her head shyly at its extravagance.

“I guess I was twice as horrid as you were, if it comes to that, Erica,” she admitted. “Maybe none of you can quite understand how I feel about—about being dependent on anyone not my own mother or father, even when they make me welcome as generously as Cousin Callie did. Mother was the same way, too—I guess she gave me my love of independence. After my father died—Barbee was only a wee baby then—mother wouldn’t accept help from anyone, except a little bit from her brother—the one who brought Barbee and me here last Christmas, you know. She took in sewing; first for neighbors and friends, and later for quite a number of outside customers. That’s how I learned to sew. She taught me to help her, as I grew older, but she never would let it interfere with my going to school. In the afternoons and evenings, though, we sat and worked together—” Milly turned her head away abruptly, but not before Erica had seen the glitter of tears on her long lashes.

Mrs. Folger’s eyes were wet, too, as she gazed down at the gold piece Milly had pressed into her hand.

“Dear child, I understand and honor the feeling that prompted you,” she said, softly. “However, this is too much for you to give me. If you insist on paying something—if you will really feel happier that way—let us divide this. Half for me, and half for you to put away. If you can make some extra money now and then, and feel you want to do it, I have nothing to say against it. But part of all you earn must be saved for the future. You may need money for something important one day, my dear.”

“Some day,” Milly flashed, eagerly, “I want to have a big, very select dressmaking establishment in Boston or—or maybe even New York. With lots of girls under me, and fine ladies coming to me to have beautiful silks and velvets and satins made up. If you really won’t take all I can earn, Cousin Callie, I’ll put the rest away for that. Oh, it won’t be for years and years, of course,” she wound up, faltering a little in confusion at having so impulsively revealed her daring ambition. “But—well, wonderful things do happen if you stick at working and hoping,” she said, half defiantly. “And then I could take care of Barbee myself, and make a home for her.”

Eighty years ago, ten dollars had a purchasing power several times that of its present value, so it was no wonder that both Lis and Erica looked with respect at the glittering gold piece in Mrs. Folger’s hand. Particularly on Nantucket, where life was simple and wants few, did it represent a quite amazing achievement on the part of a fifteen-year-old girl.

“I don’t see how you ever thought of it, or stuck at it so patiently afterward,” Erica said in quite an awed voice.

Both Mrs. Folger and Lis laughed at that, for Erica’s clumsiness with her needle, and her rebellious dislike of all kinds of sewing and knitting, were a family joke—besides being a real trial to both her aunts.

“I’m afraid Erica will have to go lacking gold pieces and independence,” observed Mrs. Folger, sagely, “if her winning them depends on a needle and thimble.”

“I wish you’d let me teach you,” Milly offered. “I’m just sure I could make anybody love sewing. It’s—why, it’s such fun to see the thing you’re working on grow under your fingers!”

But Erica, rather alarmed, shook her red curls hastily. “You never could, Milly, but thank you just the same,” she refused. “It always seems such a wicked waste of time to me,” she confessed, “to sit indoors and stick a silly little piece of steel in and out of cloth, when you could be outdoors, walking over the commons, and along the beach. There’s so much that’s interesting to keep watching wherever you go, outdoors. You know, I really was meant to be a boy, Aunt Callie. There was some dreadful mistake made, somehow, about me.”

She joined, rather ruefully, in the laugh that went up, but continued to nod her head in emphatic insistence.

Yet the fact that Milly had thought far enough ahead to plan an independent future, improbable though its early realization might be, made a deep impression on Erica. She was far from being in sympathy with that particular ambition itself—”fancy planning to sew on dresses all the rest of your born days, and liking it!” she gasped in frank dismay to Lister. But she was slightly depressed that it had never occurred to her, also, to think of plans, of any kind, regarding that vague, far-off time when she herself should be “grown up.”

She supposed, when she considered the subject, that she expected things to go on indefinitely, more or less as they did now. Of course she was hoping desperately, since Lis had brought back the jade-and-silver key, that her father would consent to take her to China on one of his voyages, at a not-too-distant date. But that, she realized now in a new discouragement of spirit, was not a real plan for the future, in the sense that Milly’s was.

If she had been a boy, there’d have been no question at all. She would have followed the sea, as her father, and his father, and any number of uncles and great-uncles had done. But when you were only a stay-at-home girl, who, unfortunately, hated the quiet, stay-at-home duties that were the only ones open to you—

She sighed a deep, gusty little sigh, and decided that she would put the further consideration of the future off for a day when the early June sunshine was not so bright and beckoning, and the crisp sea wind did not sing so alluring an invitation beachward.

Milly was up in the attic, sewing as usual, and keeping an eye on Barbee and her dolls, but Lis was always ready for a beach walk.

So presently the two set out together along Orange Street to Main, and turned down the latter to the harbor.

It was a warm late-afternoon toward the end of the first week in June. The water was a still green, with patches of deep purple farther out, and the Monomoy shore across the harbor was green also, with purple shadow-patches sloping up to a pale blue sky line.

“I always think I like October best,” Erica murmured, thoughtfully, staring raptly at the panorama of color spread out before her, “but sometimes June—— Mercy me, Lis! Look out there!”

The boy turned sharply at the change in her tone, his eyes following her pointing finger seaward. And there, less than an eighth of a mile offshore, lay a great sailing-ship at anchor, her white canvas wings just being furled in a mighty bustle of activity on her decks that could be made out plainly by the excited boy and girl.

“Lis, it’s a tea clipper!” Erica gasped, breathlessly. “What’s she doing out there? They never put in here, that I’ve heard tell of.”

“Nor me,” Lis returned, ungrammatical in his own astonishment. “She’s lying out there, of course, ‘cause she can’t cross the bar at this tide. But why she’s here at all— Say, Rick”—he caught at her arm with suddenly tense fingers—”now I’ve got a real look at her—I was so excited I didn’t before—she’s—she’s not just a tea clipper. That’s the Sea Gull, as sure as we’re standing here!”

Erica uttered a little cry. “Lis—why—why, of course she was due in Salem some time ago, and we’ve all been wondering why father didn’t come. But—you actually think that’s father’s ship come to Nantucket?”

“I know it is,” Lis declared, confidently. “Remember, Uncle Eric took Tom and me to Salem two years ago and we stayed on board three days while she lay in port. That was the time you had chicken pox, and were quarantined.” He grinned reminiscently at the memory of her frantic rebellion over being done out of that trip.

But Erica’s attention was not to be diverted by even such tragic memories, from the thrilling present.

“Now they’re lowering a boat away,” she whispered. “In just a little minute we’ll know. Lis, don’t let’s stand here like two ninnies. They’ll land over at this nearest wharf. Hurry, so we can be out at the end, waiting to meet father. For if that’s truly the Sea Gull he’ll come ashore in the first boat.”

“Sure he will,” Lis conceded, breaking into a jog-trot at Erica’s flying heels. “But there’s no need of racing and getting all het up,” he added in remonstrance as he saw her quicken her pace. “We’ll be at the wharf long before that boat can get there.”

“All right, walk if you want to, slow-poke,” Erica flung over one slim, brown-plaid shoulder. “I’m going to be there waving as soon as father’s near enough to see. Likely he’s got his glasses with him, so he’ll recognize me while they’re still away out. ‘By, tortoise!”

Dignity forbade Lis to hurry at all after that final taunt, so he slowed his steps to a leisurely walk, suppressing a grin, however, at the girl’s sauciness. Lis never lost his temper at being teased, as Tommy sometimes did.

When he arrived, cool and unruffled, at the far end of the wharf, a few minutes later, the clipper’s boat was well in toward shore, and Erica, balanced precariously on a pile of lumber at the wharf’s side, was waving both arms like the big windmill on the hill behind the little gray town at her back.

“It is father,” she shouted to Lis in triumph. “Climb up here so he can see you, too!”

Five minutes later a tall, blue-coated figure with a shock of unruly red hair like Erica’s own came up the ladder-like steps of the wharf, and Erica had hurled herself into a pair of strong, welcoming arms that lifted her high off her tiptoes in a breath-taking sweep.

“Fa-ather!” she said in a voice that was half a sob. “Oh, what a glorious surprise! And is that honestly the Sea Gull out there? And did you—”

“Belay there, young woman, and let us both get our breath back,” Captain Eric chuckled, his sea-blue eyes—of which his daughter’s were an unmistakable copy, twinkle and all—beaming from the girl to his nephew. “Lis, my boy, I’m glad to see you. I’ve been hearing quite a lot about some Chinese adventures of yours.”

“Yes, sir,” Lis twinkled back. “But they turned out all right, as you see. I’m afraid I gave the family a bit of a scare, though.”

Instead of setting Erica down on her feet, her father turned with a quick move, and lifted her down the ladder-steps into the arms of a burly, middle-aged sailor standing in the little boat below.

“Come along, Lis,” he added, casually, as though this had been all part of a long-prepared plan. “I’ve got a surprise for the two of you on board that ship of mine out there. I had sort of a notion you’d both see her come in, and be down here, waiting.”

It did not take Lis long to accept the invitation, and scrambling down the steps in his uncle’s wake, he found a seat in the stern beside Erica. The boat was pushed off by one of the sailors, heading out toward the channel; and the even dip and pull of the dripping oar-blades began rhythmically.

But though Erica’s tongue wagged faster than the oars could move, as she begged her father excitedly for at least a hint regarding the kind of surprise that awaited them, not a word would the smiling captain say on the subject. Instead he demanded news of the family, and expressed much surprise at hearing of the unexpected plan which had brought both Folger households under the same roof. However, he agreed that it was an excellent arrangement, under the existing circumstances; though he added, rather mysteriously, that he had an idea he could suggest something that might be even a better rest for Aunt Charity.

However, before Erica could ask what he meant by that, they had come alongside the Sea Gull, and she forgot everything else in the thrill of climbing aboard.

“To think I was right here fifteen years ago, and can’t remember it,” she said, wistfully, when she stood on the spick-and-span deck, looking about her with eager eyes. “To think I actually sailed all the way from China in her!”

Several of the crew were on deck, grinning in respectful curiosity at the captain’s daughter, and Erica, her hand proudly through her father’s arm, smiled back at them in her friendliest fashion.

At the head of the companion stairs leading down to the saloon she stopped a moment, wrinkling her nose inquiringly.

“Father—do all tea ships smell of Chinese incense?” she asked. “Smell it, Lis! It’s as strong as if the Sea Gull had a hold full of joss sticks instead of tea.”

“Oh, don’t stand there blocking the gangway, Rick,” Lis said, good-naturedly. “Go on down.”

There was no doubt that the smell of incense grew stronger as they hurried down the steps. But before she reached the bottom the girl stopped short once more, staring about her with eyes whose pupils seemed to dilate visibly in the dimness.

Swiftly she stooped and felt the step on which she stood. It was. Incredible, unheard-of on even the most luxurious clipper, the companion stairs were covered with a carpet of such long and velvety pile that the feet sank into its silken depths as softly as if they had been treading on the ancient Iceland moss that grows on the Nantucket commons. And in the half-light, the warmth and brilliance of the carpet’s coloring glowed like sunset shining through old, stained-glass windows in church.

Erica’s startled gaze went to her father’s amused face, and then was instinctively drawn higher still, to the source of the dim half-light that illuminated the companionway. She saw that this came from a lantern hanging on a heavy, dull-green cord from some unseen hook above—a Chinese lantern of translucent, figured silk that repeated the old, stained-glass coloring of the carpet underfoot, and cast strange, swaying shadows on the stairs, and on her father’s and Lister’s faces, as it moved a little, regularly, back and forth with the almost imperceptible motion of the ship lifting to some incoming swell.

Slowly Erica straightened up, and—her eyes still on the lantern overhead—took an impetuous step backward. Either she had completely forgotten the fact that she was on a stairway, or she turned her ankle slightly, just enough to throw her off her balance. Both Captain Eric and Lis reached for her with exclamations of warning at the same moment, and both missed her by an infinitesimal fraction of an inch.

Erica, to her subsequent and intense mortification at such a clumsy marring of a dramatic moment, rolled headlong, bumpity-bump, down the softly carpeted steps, and landed in a small undignified heap at the bottom, striking the back of her head smartly on something that was neither velvety nor soft, but wooden and sharp-cornered. There was a flashing of myriads of colored stars before her eyes, and a violent ringing of bells in her ears for a brief second, before both were blotted out in a dizzy wave of blackness that rolled over her.