Steve had turned and was marching down the steps. He paused a minute to explain, however. "Why, I'm goin' back daown to the city," he grated out. "I'm goin' back after Miss Sarah's eggs!" And he went and when he returned the creases in the paper bag which held his purchase were as fresh as when it had left the grocer's counter. "Well I'm--I'm damned!" Allison murmured, after the boy had entered the house. "I _am_ damned! You'll have to bring that youngster over, Cal, and introduce him to the children." Caleb couldn't help it. "I told you so!" he said. That was only a beginning. The next fortnight was filled with more new experiences than either Caleb or his sister would have believed could be crammed into twenty times that duration. And Caleb spent most of his waking hours boasting to the tolerant Allison of new and quite astonishing traits which he found in the boy. Acting upon Dexter's suggestion the man took Steve across the very next day and presented him to the children who were guests in the big stucco and timber house: Little, shy, transparent-skinned Mary Graves and Garret Devereau and Archibald Wickersham--the Right Honorable Archie. But from the very first, Steve's lack of enthusiasm for their company impressed itself upon Caleb. As a matter of fact, the boy did cross over and join in their games the first day or two, but it was only after Caleb himself had suggested it. And more often than not he would be back again, before an hour had passed, to sit silent and moody, chin in hand, upon the steps, gazing north at the hills. It puzzled Caleb mightily; he laid it to homesickness at the beginning. Toward Barbara Allison, throughout those days, Steve's bearing was that of frank and undisguised wonder and worship. Whatever they did, no matter what they played at, his eyes rarely left the little girl's bobbed head. For any feat which he performed he invariably turned to her for approbation. And in return for that worship Barbara's treatment of him was truly feminine. He out-ran the other boys as a deer might outrun an ox; he out-leaped them without putting himself to an effort, but he won scant attention or visible admiration from the dark-eyed Barbara. She was far more likely to turn from his hungry eyes to compliment the Honorable Archie upon his clumsy performance with a sweetness that left Steve biting his lips in lack of understanding. More than once it made even Caleb grit his teeth--the little girl's disdainfully tilted chin--and when Steve's reluctance to leave his own yard became an unmistakable thing, he spoke to Sarah about it.