A weary little negative sent her into the pantry, and soon the hungry lad was eating bread and butter and cheese and cookies, and feasting his eyes upon Polly at the same time. "Say, where in the world were you when I came away from your house?" was the sudden inquiry. "Out in the garage," Harold answered promptly. "But didn't you hear us call?" He nodded, his lips puckered into a half-smile. "Why didn't you answer, then?" Polly was plainly puzzled. "Because," he blurted out defiantly, "I wasn't coming to say good-bye for anybody!" "Perhaps you thought, with Dickens," interposed Mrs. Dudley considerately, "that it is easier to act good-bye than to say it." "It is!" declared Harold, wagging his head. "I guess he knew!" Over the wires, after the children were asleep, went messages to school and home that banished anxiety, and then the Doctor and his wife talked long into the night. It had been a disturbing day. At breakfast Harold announced his intention of remaining in Fair Harbor and going to school with Polly, but an early telegram from his father ended his happy planning. He scowled as he read the yellow slip. "Return to school at once, and behave yourself." "Botheration!" he grumbled, "I s'pose I'll have to! Pop always means what he says." Yet the lad enjoyed his breakfast, judging by the number of bananas and muffins that disappeared from his plate, until Polly, thinking of yesterday's overheard talk, wondered what they should have done if her cousin had followed out his desire. Bananas cost; she was not so sure about muffins. In consequence of which she restricted her own appetite to the latter, and made her mother question if she were quite well, to pass by her favorite fruit. Equipped with tickets for the journey and sufficient money to redeem his watch, besides a generous luncheon, Harold was put aboard the ten o'clock train. Notwithstanding his longing heart, he carried himself pluckily, consoled by Mrs. Dudley's invitation to spend a week of his summer's vacation in Fair Harbor. Yet she saw him suspiciously sweep his eyes with the back of his hand as the train whirled him off, and she sighed in sympathy, thinking, "Poor little fellow! he needs a mother!" CHAPTER XVI ROSES AND THORNS David pulled a rose from the little bush by the house corner, and began to chew its petals. "Don't do that!" begged Polly. "It doesn't want to be eaten up." The boy laughed, looking ruefully down at the jagged edges of the flower. "It isn't sweet anyway," he argued. "If I were a rose I'd be sweet, and I wouldn't have thorns. But then," he went on thoughtfully, "people are a good deal like roses. Some are sweet, and some aren't; but 'most everybody has thorns somewhere." "I guess one of mine's laziness," sighed Polly, "and it's been pricking the teachers all this week. I hate to study in such warm weather! I want to stay outdoors instead of being shut up in a stuffy room."