Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/106

90 "I did n't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did—or at least he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says your name's good Anglo-Saxon, and means 'a defender of his kindred.

"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you."

"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more interesting."

"I should think so," said Ken—secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of the Maestro's ability.

As he looked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the Wind in the orchard.

A defender of his kindred, he murmured. "H'm!"

Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That Ken was tinkering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had immediately called the power-boat, on account of