The next morning Lav invited her to go with him while he helped Cap'n Hawkes take a fishing party out to the _Mabel T_. This was one of the odd jobs Lavender often did around the harbor. Sidney had gone with him twice before and had thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fun to sit in the bow of the old dory and watch the harbor lazily coming to life in the bright morning sun, sails lifting and dipping to the breeze, boats swinging at their moorings, the low roofs of the houses on the shore glistening pink against the higher ridges of sand, the dancing waves, their tips touched with gold. She liked to listen to the noisy chatter of the picnicers, to most of whom everything was as novel as it was to her; the women invariably squealed as they climbed aboard the _Mabel T_ just as she had squealed the first time she boarded the _Arabella_. And her greatest thrill came when the tourists took her for a native, like Lavender, asking her questions which she invariably answered glibly. This was probably the last time she would go out in the harbor with Lavender. She thought it, sitting very still behind a barricade of bait pails and baskets. She glared at a tanned girl who was telling her companion that they were going to stay on at the Cape through August. The brightness of the morning only deepened her gloom--she could stand things _much_ better if it were pouring rain. The fishing party and all the paraphernalia shipped safely aboard the _Mabel T_, Lavender let the dory drift as Sidney had begged him to do the first time she had gone out. He looked at her anticipating her noisy pleasure only to find her eyes downcast, her face disconsolate. She felt his glance questioning her and lifted her head. "I've got to go home." That he simply stared and said nothing was balm to her. And she caught, too, the strange expression that flashed into the boy's great dark eyes. "I got a letter yesterday from Trude. She thinks I've stayed long enough--that I am imposing upon Aunt Achsa's hospitality." Still Lavender said nothing. Now he was looking off to where the sails of the _Mabel T_ cut the blue of the sky like the wings of a great bird. "She wants me to write at once just when I am going." Which was of course not _exactly_ the way Trude had written and yet was the correct interpretation Sidney now put upon her letter. And still no word from Lavender. "I--I hate to go. Dreadfully. Will you miss me the least bit, Lav? I--I mean you and Mart--" "Oh, _hang_ Mart!" burst out the boy hotly. "Who cares 'bout her? I can fool 'round with her _any_time only I don't want to. I--I--" He stopped short with a queer inarticulate sound and Sidney gasped. Why, Lavender was almost crying! He really _was_ crying only he was swallowing it all with funny gulps that lifted his crooked shoulders. Sidney's heart gave a happy leap.