"Yes," said Kirk, aghast at the sudden bitter sorrow in the gentle voice. "Why?" "The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases. I know." He stood among the gently falling blossoms of the big quince-tree by the terrace. Then he suddenly drew Kirk to him, and said: "I spoke of the garden being filled, to me, with the memory of children; did I not?" Kirk remembered that he had--on May-day. "A little boy and a little girl played here once," said the Maestro, "when the pools were filled, and the garden paths were trim. The little girl died when she was a girl no longer. The boy loved the sea too well. He left the garden, to sail the seas in a ship--and I have never seen him since." "Was he your little boy?" Kirk hardly dared ask it. "He was my little boy," said the Maestro. "He left the garden in the moonlight, and ran away to the ships. He was sixteen. Tell Kenelm not to love the sea too much." "But Ken wouldn't go away from Phil and me," said Kirk; "I _know_ he wouldn't." Kirk knew nothing of the call that the looming gray sails of the _Celestine_ had once made. "I thought," said the Maestro, "that the other boy would not leave his sister and his father." He roused himself suddenly. "Perhaps I do Ken injustice. I want to meet the gallant commander of the _Flying Dutchman_. It seems absurd that such close neighbors have not yet met. Bring him--and Felicia, when you come again. We'll drink to the success of the Sturgis Water Line. And don't dare to tell me, next time, that you never heard of the scale of A flat major, my little scamp!" Kirk, to whom the Maestro's word was law, delivered his message very solemnly to Ken, who laughed. "Not much fear of my cultivating too strong an affection for Mud Ocean, as navigated by the _Dutchman_. If I had a chance to see real water and real ships, it might be different." "But how horrid of his son never to let him know--poor old gentleman!" said Felicia, who was putting on her hat at the window. "Probably the old gentleman was so angry with him in the beginning that he didn't dare to, and now he thinks he's dead," Ken said. "Who thinks who's dead?" Phil asked. "You'd never make a rhetorician." "I should hope not!" said her brother. "Why, the sailor thinks his father's dead. Get your hat, Kirk." "We're going to an auction," Felicia explained. "A 'vandew'," Ken corrected. "You and Phil are, that is, to buy shoes and ships and sealing-wax, and a chair for my room that won't fall down when I sit in it, and crockery ware--and I guarantee you'll come home with a parlor organ and a wax fruit-piece under a glass case." Phil scoffed and reproved him, and he departed, whistling "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," lugubriously. His brother and sister caught up with him, and they all walked together toward Asquam, Ken bound for his boat, and the others for the "vendu," which was held at an old farm-house where Winterbottom Road joined Pickery Lane.