He had taken it quite for granted that he would come again, come frequently. These people were his friends, they were _his_ kind of people, and he recognized them at once, though he had never met anyone like them elsewhere. At the same time, he knew that he should not bring Jim or Edward or Barbara when he came: he would always come alone――or perhaps now and then he might bring Ann:――which was very strange, for Grif was the least selfish boy in the world. Of course if the others _wanted_ to come it would be different, but he didn’t think they would want to――unless――they heard about the gooseberries. The house was cool and the light rather dim. When Grif had washed himself and brushed his hair the captain took him downstairs and introduced him to his other sister, Miss Jane. Miss Jane sat in a deep, high chair, with her thin pale hands folded. She was old, very old, older it seemed to Grif than anything he had ever seen. Beside her Miss Nancy looked almost a girl. And she was so frail, so quiet, so extraordinarily quiet, that he would never have imagined her to be alive if every now and again a word or two had not dropped from her lips, showing that she listened to all that was said. But her voice was so low and toneless that it seemed to come from far back out of a remote past――faint, lingering, like a whisper from a star. Grif made a much better lunch than he usually did, and drank three glasses of raspberry wine. Afterwards he examined the curiosities which the captain had brought back from all corners of the world. And as he wandered about the room, looking at this and that, on one of the shelves of a cabinet he came upon a flute. He took it up and examined it, he even ventured to ask the captain if he played on it: but the captain shook his head. “It belongs to Billy――Billy Tremaine, my grandson.” He paused a moment. “Would you like to take him up to Billy’s room, Nancy?” he asked, with a certain hesitation, almost a diffidence. “No, not to-day, I think. Possibly――some other time. I expect he would rather go for a little stroll with you to-day.” Grif would have liked immensely to have been taken to Billy Tremaine’s room, but he showed nothing of his disappointment as he followed Captain Narcissus Batt out into the garden. There the captain smoked pipe after pipe, and as he took his young friend round, stooping every now and again to pull up a weed, he told him curious, involved tales, that perhaps could hardly have been more than “founded upon fact.” The captain’s ships appeared to have put in at every port in the world, to have weathered countless storms, and to have come through infinitely perilous adventures; but they must certainly have sailed up the rivers of Wonderland too. To Grif the time passed lightly as a dream.