Joy sang in your heart like a purr of a sea-shell. The blue blur of ocean, the dear green smell of mignonette, the rush of wind through the poplar trees were tonic memories to you. You did not wait to pack your things. You did not wait to notify your Father. You sped like a wild boy to the first wharf, to the first steamer that you could find. The week's ocean voyage went by like a year. The silly waves dragged on the steamer like a tired child on the skirts of its mother. Haste raged in your veins like a fever. You wanted to throw all the fat, heavy passengers overboard. You wanted to swim ahead with a towing rope in your teeth. You wanted to kill the Captain when he stuttered. You wanted to flay the cook for serving an extra course for dinner. Yet all the while the huge machinery throbbed in rhythm, "Time _will_ pass. It _always does_. It _always does_. It _always does_." And then at last you stood again on your Native Land, _alive, well, vital, at home_! With the sensation of an unbroken miracle, you found your way again to the little Massachusetts sea town, along the peaceful village walk to the big brown house that turned so bleakly to the street. There on the steps, wonder of wonders, you found two elderly people, Bruno-Clarice and the Grandmother-Lady, and your knees gave out very suddenly and you sank down beside Bruno-Clarice and smothered the bark right out of him. "Good lack!" cried the Grandmother-Lady, "Good _lack_!" and made so much noise that Sam himself came running like mad from the next house; and though he had no beard, you liked him very much and shook and shook his hand until he squealed. With the Grandmother-Lady plying you with questions, and Sam feeling your muscle, and Bruno-Clarice trying to crawl into your lap like a pug-dog baby, it was almost half an hour before you had a chance to ask, "Where is Ladykin?" "She's down on the beach," said Sam. "I'll go and help you find her." You looked at Sam speculatively. "I'll give you ten dollars if you won't," you said. Sam considered the matter gravely before he began to grin. "I wouldn't think of charging you more than five," he acquiesced. So you went off with Bruno-Clarice hobbling close at your heels to find Ladykin for yourself. When you saw her she was perched up on the very top of the huddly gray rock playing tinkle tunes on her mandolin, and you stole up so quietly behind her that she did not see you till you were close beside her. Then she turned very suddenly and looked down upon you and pretended that she did not know you, with her color coming and going all luminous and intermittent like a pink and white flashlight. In six years you had not seen such a wonderful playmatey face. "Who are you?" she asked. "Who are you?" "I am 'Little Boy Jack' come back to marry you," you began, but something in the wistful, shy girl-tenderness of her face and eyes choked your bantering words right off in your throat.