Eileen Carey was the first woman who had had the courage to make a home upon the Lone Rock. Other keepers had either been unmarried men, or had left their wives behind for the time that they lived there. But Nat Carey came with his wife and his child; and those in authority were glad that it was so, for they argued that a man who had a real home about him would not suffer from the loneliness of the life as others had done; and they had done several things to brighten up the little home before the new-comers arrived there. Eileen's clever hands had done more so soon as they were fairly landed, for little Pat required very little nursing, as he lay day after day in a trance of weakness and exhaustion. But his mother was satisfied that each day he grew slightly stronger, and was quite content to wait until he should awaken to a knowledge of his new surroundings, which she meantime strove to make as bright and as homelike as possible; for she meant that her husband and her little boy should not lack any of the comforts which her hands could provide during their whole stay on the Lone Rock. And now the mother was to have her reward. For several days Pat had begun to look about him, to follow her movements with his eyes, to answer when she spoke to him, and to smile when she looked his way. He was a long time in taking notice of anything except his mother and father. It seemed to them as though he had no eyes for any of the other strange things about him. He must have known that this new room, with its whitewashed walls, so spotless and clean, its queer shape, its fresh furniture and bright curtains to the sunny window, was not the room in which he had lived for all the previous years of his small life. Yet he did not take any open notice of these things for many days, and his mother would not let him be spoken to about them, for, as she truly said, if he hadn't strength to take them in with his eyes, he had far better be let alone till the strength began to come back to him of itself. And now that time had come. Pat had for some days been noticing everything--noticing with an ever-increasing curiosity and pleasure. He had begun by asking what was "that funny noise that never stopped;" and when his mother had told him it was the sound of the waves, he had asked "how they got there, for they didn't use to be so near." And so little by little Eileen had told him all the tale--how father had been offered the care of Lone Rock Lighthouse, and how the doctor had said that little Pat might thrive and grow strong if he were to be taken right away from the court in which he had always lived. And Pat lay and smiled at the tale, and got his mother to tell it him again and again, and grew so fond of the song of the sea before ever he had been able to get up and look at it, that he often told her "it was making him well as fast as it could;" and she would smile with tears in her eyes and believe him.