“It wasn’t kids as was wanted,” said the boy, “it was revenge. That’s what Mother Romaine said—my father he was a sort of Beak, so he give George Lee eighteen months for poaching. An’ the day they took him the church bells was ringing like mad, and George, as he was being took, he said: ‘What’s all that row? It ain’t Sunday.’ And then they tells him as how the bells was ringing ’cause him that was the Beak—my father, you know—he’d got a son and hare. And that was me. You wouldn’t think it to look at me,” he added, spitting pensively and taking up the barrow handles, “but I’m a son and hare.” “And then what happened?” Mavis asked as they trudged on. “Oh, George—he done his time, and I was a kiddy then, year-and-a-half old, all lace and ribbons and blue shoes made of glove-stuff, and George pinched me, and it makes me breff short, wheeling and talking.” “Pause and rest, my spangled friend,” said the Mermaid in a voice of honey, “and continue your thrilling narrative.” “There ain’t no more to it,” said the boy, “except that I got one of the shoes. Old Mother Romaine ’ad kep’ it, and a little shirt like a lady’s handkercher, with R. V. on it in needlework. She didn’t ever tell me what part of the country my dad was Beak in. Said she’d tell me next day. An’ then there wasn’t no next day for her—not fer telling things in, there wasn’t.” He rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “She wasn’t half a bad sort,” he explained. “Don’t cry,” said Mavis unwisely. “Cry? Me?” he answered scornfully. “I’ve got a cold in me ’ead. You oughter know the difference between a cold in the head and sniveling. You been to school, I lay?—they might have taught you that.” “I wonder the gypsies didn’t take the shoe and the shirt away from you?” “Nobody know’d I’d got ’em; I always kep’ ’em inside my shirt, wrapt up in a bit of paper, and when I put on me tights I used to hide ’em. I’m a-going to take the road one of these days, and find out who it was lost a kid with blue shoes and shirt nine years come April.” “Then you’re ten and a half,” said Mavis. And the boy answered admiringly: “How do you do it in your head so quick, miss? Yes, that’s what I am.” Here the wheelbarrow resumed its rather bumpety progress, and nothing more could be said till the next stoppage, which was at that spot where the sea-front road swings around and down, and glides into the beach so gently that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends. It was much lighter there than up on the waste space. The moon was just breaking through a fluffy white cloud and cast a trembling sort of reflection on the sea. As they came down the slope all hands were needed to steady the barrow, because as soon as she saw the sea the Mermaid began to jump up and down like a small child at a Christmas tree. “Oh, look!” she cried, “isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it the only home in the world?” “Not quite,” said the boy.