"The prize,--the prize, Marraine! Dan has drawn my birthday prize!" And, under a battery of curious and envious eyes, Dan opened the box to find within a pretty gold watch, ticking a most cheering greeting to its new owner.

"Dan,--Dan!" Polly's jubilant voice rose over all the chorus around him.

"Oh, I'm so glad you got it, Dan!"

And Marraine's eyes followed Polly's delighted glance with the same look of curious interest that she had bent upon Dan a while ago on the porch.

"Do you mean that this is for me?" he blurted out, in bewilderment.

"Yes, for you,--for _you_," repeated Polly in high glee. "It's real gold and keeps real time, and it's yours forever!"

"It's too--too much--I mean it's--it's too fine for a fellow like me,"

stammered Dan. "What will I do with it?"

"Wear it," chirped Miss Polly, throwing the silken guard around his neck, "so you will never forget my birthday, Dan."

And then a big j.a.panese gong sounded the call to the flower-decked tables, where busy waiters were soon serving a veritable fairy feast. There were cakes of table-size and shape and color; little baskets and boxes full of wonderful bonbons; nuts sugared and glazed until they did not seem nuts at all; ice-cream birds in nests of spun sugar; "kisses" that snapped into hats and wreaths and caps. And all the while the band played, and the jewelled lights twinkled, and the stars shone far away above the arching trees. And Dan, with his watch around his neck, held his place as the winner of the prize at Miss Polly's side, feeling as if he were in some dizzy dream. Then there were more games, and a grand hide-and-seek, in which dad and some of the grown-ups joined.

Dan had found an especially fine place under the gnarled boughs of an old cedar tree, that would have held its head high in the starlight if some of dad's gardeners had not twisted it out of growth and shape. Hiding under the crooked shadows, Dan was listening to the merry shouts through maze and garden, when he became suddenly conscious of a change in their tone.

The voices grew sharp, shrill, excited, and then little Polly burst impetuously into his hiding place,--a sobbing, trembling, indignant little Polly, followed by a score of breathless young guests.

"I don't believe it!" she was crying tempestuously. "I _won't_ believe it!

You're just telling horrid stories on Dan, because I like him and he got the prize."

"O Pollykins! Pollykins!" came Miss Stella's low, chiding voice.

"Halloo! halloo! What's the trouble?" rose dad's deep tones above the clamor. "My little girl crying,--crying?"

"Yes, I am!" was the sobbing answer. "I can't help it, dad. The girls are all whispering mean, horrid stories about Dan, and I made them tell me all they said they had heard. I don't believe them, and I _won't_ believe them! I told them I wouldn't believe them,--that I would come right to Dan and let him speak for himself.--Were you ever a newsboy and a beggar boy, Dan? Did--did you ever black boots? Have you an aunt in the poorhouse, as Minna Foster says?"

XVIII.--BACK INTO LINE.

There was a moment's pause. Dan was really too bewildered to speak. He felt he was reeling down from the rainbow heights to which Miss Polly had led him, and the shock took away his breath.

"It's all--all a horrid story; I'm sure it is,--isn't it, Dan?" pleaded his little friend, tremulously.

"Why, no!" said Dan, rallying to his simple, honest self again. "It isn't a story at all. I _was_ a newsboy, I _did_ shine boots at the street corner, and Aunt Winnie _is_ with the Little Sisters of the Poor now."

"Bravo!--bravo!" came a low silvery voice from the shadows, and Miss Stella clapped her slender hands.

"O Dan, Dan!" cried poor little Miss Polly, sobbing outright. "A newsboy and bootblack! Oh, how could you fool me so, Dan?"

"With your infernal lies about your home and family!" burst forth dad, in sudden wrath at Polly's tears.

"I didn't fool,--I didn't lie, sir!" blurted out Dan, fiercely. "I did nothing of the kind!"

"If you will kindly do the boy justice to remember, he did _not_, Cousin Pem!" and Miss Stella's clear, sweet voice rose in witness. "You gave his family history yourself. He did not know what you were talking about, with your Crusading ancestors and the D'Olanes. I could see it in his face. You are all blood-blind up here, Cousin Pem. I was laughing to myself all the time, for I guessed who Dan Dolan was. I knew he was at St. Andrew's. His dear old Aunt Winnie is one of my truest friends."

"O Marraine, Marraine!" murmured Polly, eagerly. "And--and you don't mind it if--"

"If she is with the Little Sisters of the Poor, Pollykins? Not a bit! Some day I may be there myself. Now that this tempest in a teapot is over, you can all go off and finish your games. I am going to sit under this nice old tree and talk to Miss Winnie's boy."

And while dad, still a little hot at the trouble that had marred Polly's party, started the fun in another direction, Miss Stella gathered her silvery gown around her and sat down on the rustic bench beneath the old cedar, and talked to Dan. He learned how Aunt Winnie had sewed patiently and skilfully for this lovely lady a dozen years ago, when she was spending a gay season in his own town; and how the gentle old seamstress, with her simple faith and tender sympathy, her wise warnings to the gay, motherless girl, had won a place in her heart.

"I tried to coax her home with me," said Miss Stella, "to make it 'home,'

as I felt she could; but Baby Danny was in the way,--the little Danny that she could not leave."

Then Dan, in his turn, told about Killykinick, and how he had been sent there for the summer and had met little Polly.

"I should have told," he said, lifting Aunt Winnie's own blue Irish eyes to Miss Stella's face,--"I should have said right out straight and square that I wasn't Polly's kind, and had no right to push in here with grand folks like hers. But it was all so fine it sort of turned my head."

"It will do that," replied Miss Stella, softly. "It has turned mine often, Danny. But now we both see straight and clear again, and I am going to make things straight and clear with all the others."

"You can't," said Dan,--"not with those grand ladies in gold spectacles; not with Polly's dad; maybe not with Polly herself. I'm all mixed up, and out of line with them. And--and--" (Dan took the silken guard from his neck) "I want you to give them back this gold watch, and tell them so."

(He slipped the Jack Horner prize into Miss Stella's hand.) "I'm not asking anything and I'm not taking anything that comes to me like this.

And--and--" (he rose and stood under the crooked tree in all his straight, st.u.r.dy strength) "Neb is down at the wharf with a load of clams. We pa.s.sed him as we came up. I'm not pushing in among the silk cushions any more.

I'm going home with him."

Which, with Miss Stella's sympathetic approval, he did at once.

When a little later the guests had all gone, and "The Polly" was taking her white-winged way back to Killykinick with Dud, Jim, and Freddy; when the jewelled lights had gone out, and the party was over, and all was quiet on the starlit porch, Miss Stella returned Dan's watch and gave his message. Even the two grandmammas, being really grandmammas at heart, softened to it, and dad declared gruffly it had been a fool business altogether, while Polly flung herself sobbing into her G.o.dmother's arms.

"O Dan,--poor Dan! He is the nicest boy I ever saw,--the nicest and the kindest, Marraine! And now--now he will never come back here any more!"

"I don't think he will, Pollykins," was the low answer. "You see"

(Marraine dropped a light kiss on the nestling curls), "he was a newsboy and a bootblack, and he does not deny it; while you--you, Pollykins--"

"Oh, I don't care, what he was!" interrupted Miss Polly, tempestuously,--"I don't care what he was. I took him for my real true friend, and I am not going to give up Dan as I gave up Meg Murray, Marraine." Polly tightened her clasp around Miss Stella's neck so she could whisper softly in her ear: "If he won't come back, you and I will go after him; won't we, Marraine?"

Meanwhile, with his head pillowed on a pile of fish nets--very different, we must confess, from the silken cushions of dad's pretty yacht,--and with old Neb drowsily watching her ragged sail, Dan was back again in his own line, beneath the guiding stars. It was a calm, beautiful night, and those stars were at their brightest. Even Neb's dull wits seemed to kindle under their radiance.

"You can steer 'most anywhere when they shine like that. Don't want none of these 'ere winking, blinking lights to show you the way," he said.

"But the trouble is they don't always shine," answered Dan.

"No," said Neb, slowly, "they don't; that's a fact. But they ain't ever really out, like menfolk's lights. The stars is always thar."

"Always there,"--yes, Dan realized, as, with his head on the dank, fishy pillow, he looked up in the glory above him, the stars were always there.

Blurred sometimes by earthly mists and vapors, lost in the dazzling gleam of jewelled lights, darkened by the shadows of crooked trees, they shone with pure, steadfast, guiding rays,--the stars that were always there. A witching little Will-o'-the-wisp had bewildered Dan into strange ways this evening; but he was back again in his own straight honest line beneath the stars.

On "The Polly," making her way over the starlit water to Killykinick, things were not so pleasant.

"It was a mean, dirty trick to give Dan away. I don't care who did it!"

said big-hearted Jim, roused into spirit and speech.