Among these concentric energies, Margaret and Miss Penny completed their own simple preparations, and Graeme busied himself with the details of the children's feast which was to take place in an adjacent field. He went down to the harbour to meet the Tuesday morning's boat which was to bring over the fruit and frivolities ordered from Guernsey--strawberries enough to start a jam factory, grapes enough to stock a greengrocer's shop, chocolates, sweets, Christmas crackers and fancy biscuits, in what he hoped would prove sufficiency, but had his doubts at times when he saw the eager expectancy with which he was regarded by every youngster he met. He was just starting out when Johnnie Vautrin hailed him from his lair in the hedge. "Heh, Mist' Graeme! I seen--" "Better not, Johnnie!" he said, with a warning finger. "If it's anything uncomfortable I'll come right over and jump on you and Marrlyou." "Goderabetin, you dassen't!" "Oh, dassen't I? If you don't see everything good for this week, and fine weather too, you little imp, I'll--" "Que-hou-hou!" croaked Johnnie, and Marielihou yawned and made a futile attempt to wash behind her ears but found it discomforting to a sore hind-leg, so gave it up and spat at him instead. "And, moreover, I won't have you at my party." "Hou-hou! I'm coming. Ma'm'zelle she ask me." "I'll tell her to send you back-word." "She wun't, she wun't. Where you goin'?" "To the harbour, to see if all the good things have come for the other little boys and girls." "Oh la-la! Good things and bad things come by the boat. Sometime it'll sink and drown 'em all." "Little rascal!" and he waved his hand and went on. "Late, isn't she, Carre?" he asked, as he leaned over the sea-wall with the rest. "She's late, sir." "I hope nothing's happened to her. I'll never forgive her if she's made an end of my sweet things for the kiddies." "She'll come." And she came. With a shrill peal she came round the Burons and made for the harbour. And Graeme, wedged into the corner of the iron railing where it looks out to sea, to make sure at the earliest possible moment that that which he had come to meet was there, met of a sudden more than he had looked for. "Well ... I'll be hanged!" he jerked to himself, and then began to laugh internally. For, standing on the upper deck of the small steamer, and looking, somehow, very much out of place there, was a tall but portly young gentleman, in a bowler hat and travelling coat and a monocle, whose face showed none of the usual symptoms of the Sark lover. To judge from his expression, the little island impressed him anything but favourably. It offered him none of the relaxations and amusements to which he was accustomed. It looked, on the face of it, an uncivilised kind of a place, out of which a man might be ejected without ceremony if he chose to make himself objectionable.