Back into the dockshed I went, and all up and down and in and out among piles of strange and odorous stuffs. And once more I felt the wonder of this modern ocean world. I followed this raw produce of Mother Earth's four corners back into those factory buildings ashore. I saw it made into chewing-gum, toys, sofas, glue, curled hair and wall-paper. I saw it made into ladles' hats, corks, carpets, dynamos, stuffed dates. I saw it made into dirt-proof collars and shirt bosoms, salad dressing, blackboards, corsets and the like. Again I fairly reveled in lists of things and the places they came from and the places to which they were going. I saw chewing-gum start for Rio and Quaker Oats for Shanghai, patent medicine for Nabat, curled hair for Yokohama, "movy" theater seats for Sydney, tomato soup for Cape Town and corsets for Rangoon. "From Everywhere to Anywhere" was the title of my article. It took only a week to write, and was ready when the Dillons came home. CHAPTER XIV They landed toward the end of July and I went to the dock to meet them. Elated over my finished story, which I had in my pocket, and made absurdly happy by the sight of Eleanore smiling down at me over the rail, I was surprised at the greeting she gave me. "Why, you poor boy. How terribly hard you've been working," she said. And she looked at me as though I were sick and worn to the bone. The end of it was that I accepted delightedly an invitation to spend a week up at their cottage on the Sound. Those were seven vivid glowing days. I could not relax, I was too intensely happy, I had too much to tell her, not only about my work but about a host of other things that without rhyme or reason popped into my mind and had to be said. The range of our talk was tremendous, and the wider we ranged the closer we drew. For she too was telling things, and her things were as unexpected as mine and infinitely more absorbing. Her manner toward me had quite changed. It was that of a nurse with an invalid, she frankly ordered me about. "Why can't you lie back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day--and instead you're as wide awake as an owl." "I am," I admitted happily. "I'm trying to see everything." The chic little hat and the blouse she wore were adorably fresh from Paris, and as I watched her run her boat I could feel flowing into my body and soul a perfectly boundless store of new life. "I've been thinking you over," she said. "Have you?" I asked delightedly. I had often wondered if she had. "What do you think?" I inquired. Eleanore frowned perplexedly. "You're such a queer combination," she said. "You have such ridiculous ups and downs. To-day you're way up, aren't you." "I am," I said very earnestly. She looked off placidly over the Sound. "You're so very sensitive," she went on. "You let things take hold of you so hard. And yet on the other hand you seem to be so very----" she hesitated for a word.