“Seven-teen!” she gasped. “Why, but you’re no bigger than Dickie--though you know French and he doesn’t, and you know a lot more than he does and are lots--lots nicer,” she added, by way of retrieving her blunder. “But you won’t want anything to do with me,” she said with honest candor. “You’ll think I’m only a little girl. I suppose I am.” He did not seem ready to cast her off as infantile and beneath his notice. “I am too small,” he admitted. “I was not so small in Paris--I mean, the boys at school there were not so large as fellows of the same age here. I was average height. Here I’m a little--runt.” “What a lot you must have seen,” Mermaid marvelled. “I hope you’ll tell me all about it. You can do that and teach me French that way, can’t you? I’ve never been anywhere except here and on the beach. You know I came ashore in a shipwreck.” She told him about the wreck, what she had heard of it from her Dad and other men of the Lone Cove Station; of her home with Keturah Smiley, and of life on the beach. Then she spoke of Captain John Hawkins and the clipper ship _China Castle_. “You know your father commanded her afterward.” Guy did not seem to know it. “He never talks about his ships,” the boy explained. With the help of some questions from Mermaid, he told her about himself. He had been born in San Francisco and had lived there for some years. In the Presidio section of the city. As he talked of the town Mermaid’s face took on a puzzled look. “It’s the funniest thing,” she declared. “Do you know, I have a feeling that I lived there once on a time. It seems as if it came back to me, as if I just sort of half-remembered----You know the _Mermaid_, the ship I was aboard, came from San Francisco.” After they left San Francisco, the Vantons had gone to live in Paris. Guy’s father had then given up definitely all idea of going to sea again.