"No, I fear you couldn't go in a boat. Trouble is," she murmured, more to herself than to him, "I don't know where you _would_ go."

"Don't Papa know 'bout them?"

"I sometimes think he would like to learn."

"Papa knows all there is to know 'bout guns and powders," defended Worth loyally.

"Yes, I know; but I don't believe guns and powders have any power to get you to these underlying principles of life."

"Well, what _does_ get you there?" demanded her companion of the practical sex.

She laughed. "I don't know, dear. I honestly don't know. And I'd like to know. Perhaps some time I will meet some one who is very wise, and then I'll ask whether it is experience, or wisdom, or sympathy. Whether some people are born to get there and other people not, or just how it is."

"Watts says you have more sympathy than wisdom, Aunt Kate."

"You mustn't talk about me to Watts," she admonished spiritedly. Then in the distance she heard a mocking voice insinuatingly inquiring: "But why not, if it's all one world?"

"But he said," Worth added, "that it shouldn't be held against you, 'cause of course you never had half a chance. No, it wasn't Watts said that, either. It was the man that mends the boats. It was Watts said you was a yard wide."

Katie's head had gone up; she was looking straight ahead, cheeks red.

"Indeed! So it's the man that mends the boats says these hateful things about me, is it?"

"Why no, Aunt Kate; not hateful things. He says he's sorry for you. Why, he says he don't know anybody more to be pitied than you are."

"Well--_really!_ I must say that of all the insolent --impertinent--insufferable--"

"He says you would have amounted to something if you'd had half a chance.

But he's afraid you never will, Aunt Kate."

"I do not wish to hear anything more about him," said Aunt Kate haughtily. "Now, or at any future time."

But it was not five minutes later she asked, with studied indifference: "Pray what does this absurd being look like?"

"What being, Aunt Kate?" innocently inquired the being who was very young.

"Why this sympathetic gentleman!"

"Oh, I don't know. He's just a man. Sometimes he wears boots. He's real nice, Aunt Kate."

"Oh I'm sure he must be charming!"

She turned toward home, more erect, attending to her duties with a dignified sense of responsibility.

The glare of day had gone, but without bringing the cool of night. It made the world seem very worn. Little by little resentment slipped away and she had joined the man who mended the boats in pitying herself. She was disposed to agree with him that she might have amounted to something had she had half a chance. No one else had ever thought of her amounting to anything--amounting, or not amounting. They had merely thought of her as Katie Jones. And certainly no one else had ever pitied her. It made the man who mended the boats seem a wise and tender being. As against the whole world she felt drawn to his large and kindly understanding.

Excitement had suddenly seized Worth. "Aunt Kate--Aunt Kate!" he cried peremptorily, pointing to a cove in one of the islands they were passing, "please land there!"

"Why no, Worth, we can't land. It's too hard. And why should we?"

"Oh Aunt Kate--please! Oh please!"

She was puzzled. "But why, Worthie?"

"Cause I want you to. Don't you love me 't all any more, Aunt Kate?"

That was too much. He was suddenly just a baby who had been made to suffer for her grown-up disturbances. "But, dearie, what will you do when we land?"

"I want to look for something. I've got to get something. I want to show you something. 'Twon't take but a minute."

"What do you want to show me, dear?"

"Why I can't tell you, Aunt Kate. It's a surprise. It's a beautifulest surprise. Something I want to show you just because I love you, Aunt Kate."

Katie's eyes brooded over him. "Dear little chappie, and Aunt Kate's a cross mean old thing, isn't she?"

"Not if she'll stop the boat," said crafty Worth.

She laughed and surveyed the shore. It looked feasible. "I'm very 'easy,' Worth. Just don't get it into your head all the world is as easy as I am."

The little boy and the dog were out before she had made her landing. They were running through the brush. "Worth," she called, "don't go far. Don't go out of sound."

"No," he called back excitedly, "'tain't far."

She was anxious, reproaching herself as absurd and rash, and was just attempting to ground the boat and follow when Queen came bounding back.

Then came Worth's voice: "Here 'tis! Here's Aunt Kate--waiting for you!"

Next there emerged from the brush a flushed and triumphant little boy, and after him came a somewhat less flushed and less obviously triumphant man.

CHAPTER XVIII

Her first emotion was fury at herself. She must be losing her mind not to have suspected!

Then the fury overflowed on Worth and his companion. It reached high-water mark with the stranger's smile.

And there dissolved; or rather, flowed into a savage interest, for the smile enticed her to mark what manner of man he was. And as she looked, the interest shed the savagery.

His sleeves were rolled up; he had no hat, no coat. He had been working with something muddy. A young man, a large man, and strong. The first thing which she saw as distinctive was the way his smile lived on in his eyes after it had died on his lips, as if his thought was smiling at the smile.

Even in that first outraged, panic-stricken moment Katie Jones knew she had never known a man like that.

"Here he is, Aunt Kate!" cried her young nephew, dancing up and down.

"This is him!"

It was not a presentation calculated to set Katie at ease. She sought refuge in a frigid: "I beg pardon?"