“Maybe she’ll get over it,” Lilla Joy suggested, hopefully. Lilla was no more prejudiced in the newcomer’s favor than Erica, but she adored the latter and was merely trying to be comforting on general principles. “I wish Lis were at home,” Erica responded. “He’s not the kind that gets excited and flies off at a tangent as Tommy and I do. He’s sort of quiet, you know, and soothing. I guess perhaps he could find out what’s ailing Milly. Somehow I don’t believe it’s all grief for her mother. That would make her unhappy, but it needn’t make her sulky and hate folks as she seems to. Tommy says it’s just my imagination, but I really do think there’s something else—something quite different—that’s worrying her and making her act this way.” “I suppose you couldn’t ask her,” Lilla said. “I’ve tried once or twice,” Erica confessed. “Sort of roundabout, you know, so she wouldn’t think I was just curious. But you—you can’t seem to get _at_ Milly at all.” “Well, old Lis ought to be home in another month, now,” Tommy said. “We counted up, Rick, you remember, that April at the latest would bring the _Spray_ back. Maybe sooner.” His listeners both brightened. “I’d forgotten it was quite so near,” Lilla declared. “My, Tommy, I’ll be glad to see Lis round here again! He’s quieter than you, but he leaves a—a sort of hole when he’s away.” “I know,” Erica confirmed, gloomily. “I don’t see why I couldn’t have been born a boy, and then Tommy and Lis and I could have all shipped together.” The 1st of April came and went, but no news of Lister Folger came to Nantucket. By the end of the first week in that month the whole Folger family showed the strain of suspense by a most novel abstraction and a tendency to start nervously at sounds. The _Spray_ would not, of course, put in at Nantucket, on her return voyage, but there had already been more than ample time for her to have reached Boston, her home port, and for Lis to have either made the trip from there to the island, or to have written, if, for some reason, Captain Bartlet had not wished him to leave the ship. CHAPTER VI The first two weeks in April came and went without news of Lis. Then, on a rainy afternoon in the middle of the month Erica and Tommy, sitting on the floor before the grate fire in Miss Charity’s sitting room reading out of the same book of old sea tales, heard a knock on the front door. Erica rose, yawning, and crossed the passage to answer it, urging Tommy vehemently not to turn a page until her return. The afternoon light had almost gone now, and with the glow of the fire still in her eyes she blinked unrecognizingly at the bulky figure standing on the porch in the dusk. “Doesn’t thee remember me, missy?” a deep voice asked in the familiar Quaker speech that more than half the island used. Erica gave a little gasp, and one hand flew instinctively to her throat as if breathing had all at once become difficult.