Before I was aware of what he was about he brushed his hand across my forehead and smoothed back my hair, crying out with delight as he did so, "Yess, eet ees. The scarr, as she say. Tommee, I have message for you." I was thrown into a violent flutter of emotion. It was so unexpected, so incredible. That we should have been tossed together like this, I from the East and he from the North, was strange enough in itself; but that he should have a message for me, a message from Jenny, was a wonder beyond belief. "Tell me," I said, hardly able to form the words. But before he would speak I had to endure his winks and nods and smiles and sighing innuendoes of "Ah, the leetle boy! But he man of the worrld! He have sweethearrt! Ah, that ees preetty, yess!" But at last he told me the story. He had made a second visit to the "beeg house" on the moors, in spite of his vow never to go near it again. He shuddered as he mentioned the haunted place. However, this time he had been civilly welcomed; and by his description of the Captain with his kind fierce eyes, and of the "leetle gerrl with the voice of a queen," I knew he wasn't deceiving me. "And the leetle ladee...." "Jenny," I cried. "Jenny," he repeated. "Ah, that ees right. She send message to leetle boy with scarr under the hairr. I say, 'Where I find heem?' She say, 'Hees name Tommee; you ask.' I shrug shoulderr and take message, for I no can say no. She so decided leetle gerrl." I laughed at the picture, for it was so like Jenny. She had sent me forth on my quest in the same way, without a thought as to how I might possibly succeed. Picardino seemed to understand me, for he smiled and said, "Ah, you know the mannerr, yess. But when she say Tommee I not think of my Tommee. That foolish of me." I can't report in full the rigmarole he treated me to. The heart of the message was that I was to seek out Jenny in London. In London! I must have been near her then before I had set out on this voyage. She wanted me. I was to go to her at once. And the precious address was supplied. At once! That was a year ago. In a dim dismay I wondered whether Jenny would forgive me for deserting her so long. It seemed difficult to make excuses to her. However, she wanted me. I was in a glow of expectation at that. She wanted me. And I was bound for England now, I believed. I would go to her without delay. Eagerly I pressed Picardino for fresh details of my little sweetheart, for I understood now the meaning of all the strange turbulent shyness of the past year. I was a man of the world, as Picardino had said. I had learnt something of the ways of men and women. And I knew that the fermenting uneasiness that the thought of Jenny had aroused in me meant merely that I loved her.