She dashed upstairs a second time, and returned carrying a dark-blue cotton cord of a curious weave, knotted at intervals. Taking the ring from Tommy, she slipped it over one end of the cord, adding still another knot to the collection, which secured both ends firmly together. Then, with the air of a queen bestowing the accolade of knighthood on a subject, she flung the cord itself over Tommy’s fair, ruffled head, and tucked the ring down inside his collar. “It’s safer to wear it out of sight, anyhow,” she advised him. “There are always rough men in those clipper crews, and you might have the ring stolen, if they knew you had it.” She sat down, still breathless after her run upstairs, on the step between her two cousins and slipped an arm through an arm of each of them. Another little silence fell. In the midst of their banter and laughing plans the realization seemed to have seized on all three at once, that there were only a few more days left of the old, happy companionship. Characteristically enough, it was Tommy who spoke first. “Oh, well,” he observed, philosophically. “I won’t be gone more than a year. Probably not so much. The _Spray’s_ one of the fast clippers, you know. Rick’ll just have time to let that silly hair-cut grow out long enough to wear the ivory comb I’ll bring her back from Canton or Cochin-China, in exchange for Sun Li’s ring.” “All right,” Erica flashed back, her eyes bubbling over with fun again. “I’ll put it with all the rest of the Chinese presents Aunt Charity won’t let me use yet. But I’m not going to let my hair grow,” she added with firmness. “It’s much too comfortable this way.” Which again, had Erica only known it, was a remark that a good many other girls were destined to repeat, in the same tone of conviction, eighty years later. CHAPTER II The cobblestones of Main Street—until recently known as State—were slippery after a heavy shower, and Erica, picking a careful way across them that she might not bespatter her white stockings with mud, spied a plump and dignified figure in sober Quaker garb wending its way up the street ahead of her, and called after it, anxiously: “Mrs. Macy! Oh, Mrs. Macy, please!” The plump little lady turned at the sound of her name, smiling. “Good morning, Erica,” she said. “Was thee trying to overtake me, my dear?” “Yes, ma’am.” Erica was panting with her own hurry. “But you walk twice as fast as Aunt Charity. I was just going to your house with a message. Aunt Charity wants that you and Captain Bartlet should come to supper tomorrow night at six o’clock. You know Tommy is going to sea in the _Spray_ and—” A sudden twinkle in the little old lady’s blue eyes was answered by a twinkle in Erica’s. “Yes’m, I guess Aunt Charity thinks it’s her bounden duty to talk to Captain Bartlet about Tommy.”