Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/20

8 but the boy? The painter caught it all,—the full cordiality for the captain, then the half-turn, the flicker of a glance at his companion, the shy constraint, the convulsive handclasp, and the sudden release of it.

"Hello, Ben!" and "Hello, Sally," that was all that was left of the greetings, so carefully conned-over for many nights, on the quarter-deck under the stars, and in the little white house up the hill.

The older man was evidently observant of more signs than those of the weather, for, after a few inquiries, and two or three playful tweaks of her ear, quite "in character" with the captain-and-god father rôle, correctly allotted him by the sentimental stranger, he said something about "supper, later at the house," and "tell your father to stow away that temper of his, and close down the hatches," then he walked briskly up the gangplank.

With the waning sun, the queer-hatted one folded up his tripod and kit, and walked off the pier—landward of course,—and quite out of Sally Fell's life. She never saw him or his picture, which didn't matter much, either, for, though it has been shown a number of times at exhibitions, it was an ideal, lukewarm sort of thing, therefore not Sally at all.

They were gone before him, the boy and girl, past the dingy warehouses, up Water Street, and Jeliffe, and Farragut, to Preble Square, where the silent soldier stood at his post, his rifle over his arm, as it had lain ever since the famous Brigadier Bartlett had taken the flag from his visored cap, over fifty years ago.

They zigzagged slowly over the climbing pavements, at a