"The Judge will be here in a minute," said Launcelot; "he stayed in the carriage, and Perkins put up the curtains, so that they managed to keep pretty dry. "I wonder if there will be room for me to ride home?" Tommy asked. "I am dead tired." "I guess so. The Judge has the big wagon with the three seats. Pretty long tramp you had, didn't you?" and Launcelot looked at the boy's dusty shoes. "Awful," said Tommy, with a quiver in his voice at the remembrance. "Hungry?" questioned Launcelot, briefly. "Awful," said Tommy again. "I haven't had a square meal for a week," and now the quiver was intensified. Amelia clasped her hands tragically. "Oh, Tommy," she asked in a stricken tone, "didn't you almost die?" But just then Tommy caught Judy's eye on him, and was forced to continue his character of bold adventurer. "Oh, a man must expect things like that," he asserted. "Suppose it had been a desert island--" "Or a shipwreck," said Amelia, "with bread and water for a week." "Or pirates," ventured Nannie. "Oh, pirates," sniffed the dark young lady on the hay; "there aren't any pirates now." "Well, there are shipwrecks," defended Tommy. "Yes, but they are not half as interesting as they used to be." "And desert islands." "A few maybe. But it is such an old story to hear about Robinson Crusoes." Tommy looked blank. He had always implicitly believed the marvelous tales of yarn spinners, and his soul had been fired by the thought of a life of adventure on the deep. He had talked to the little girls until they had accounted him somewhat of a hero and looked to him to perform great feats of bravery. "I don't see any fun in going to sea, then," he said, dolefully, "if there ain't any pirates and shipwrecks and things like that--" "It isn't those things that make you love the sea, Tommy," cried Judy. "It is the smell of it, and the wind, and the wide blue water and the wide blue sky. It is something in your blood. I don't believe you really love it at all, Tommy Tolliver." She got up from the couch and began to gather up her wet hair, and only Launcelot saw that she did it to hide her tears. But Tommy was blind to her emotion. "Yes, I do," he asserted, stoutly. "I do love it, and I bet I could find a treasure island if I tried." Judy stamped her foot impatiently. "Oh, you couldn't," she blazed, "you couldn't, Tommy Tolliver; you could just go to work like a common seaman and get your tobacco and your grog, and be frozen and stiff in the winter storms and hot and weary in the summer ones. But if you really loved the sea you wouldn't care--you wouldn't care, just so you could be rocked to sleep by it at night, and wake to hear it ripple against the sides of the boat--" "Gee--" said Tommy, open-mouthed at this outburst. "Tommy," said Launcelot, with a glance at Judy's excited face and at the trembling hands that could scarcely fasten her hair, "you don't know a sailboat from a scow."