"Worships the very ground you tread on." Ruth laughed. "Were those his words?" Dicky laughed too. "Likely they would be! Fancy old Han talking like a sick schoolgirl! I made the words up to please you: but it's the truth, all the same." They reached the pool; and the boy, after ten minutes spent in discovering the biggest monster among the trout and attempting to tickle him with a twig, fell to prodding the turfed brink thoughtfully. "We talked a deal about you, first-along," he blurted at length. "I fancy old Han guessed that I was--was--well, fond of you and all that sort of thing." "Dear Dicky!" "Boys are terrible softies at this age," my young master admitted. "And, after all, it was rather a knockdown, you know, when papa's letter came with the news." "But we're friends, eh?--you and I--just as before?" "Oh, of course--only you might have told. . . . And I've brought you a parrot. Remember the parrots in that old fellow's shop in Port Nassau?" She led him to talk of his sea adventures, of the ship, of the West Indies among which they had been cruising; and as they wandered back from terrace to terrace he poured out a stream of boyish gossip about his shipmates, from Captain Vyell down to the cook's dog. Half of it was Hebrew to her; but in every sentence of it, and in the gay, eager voice, she read that the child had unerringly found his vocation; that the sea lent him back to the shore for a romp and a holiday, but that to the sea he belonged. "There's one thing against shipboard though." He had come to a halt, head aslant, and said it softly, eyeing a tree some thirty yards distant. "What?" "No stones lying about." Picking up one, he launched it at a nuthatch that clung pecking at the moss on the bark. "Hit him, by George! Come--" He ran and she raced after him for a few paces, but stopped half-way, with her hand to her side. The nuthatch was not hit after all, but had bobbed away into the green gloom. "Tell you what--you can't run as you used," he said critically. "No? . . ." She was wondering at the mysterious life a-flutter in her side--that it should be his brother. "Not half. I'll have to get you into training. . . . Now show me the stables, please." They were retracing their steps when along a green alley they saw Mr. Hanmer coming down to meet them. He was alone, and his face, always grave, seemed to Ruth graver than ever. "Dicky!" said he. "Service, if you please." "Ay, sir!" Dicky's small person stiffened at once, and Dicky's hand went up to the salute. "Wait here, please. I wish a word in private with Lady Vyell--if you will forgive me, ma'am?" "Why to be sure, sir," she answered, wondering. As he turned, she walked on with him. After some fifty paces she confronted him under the pale-green dappled shadows of the alley. "Something has happened? Is it serious?" "Yes."