Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/120

104 "The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases. I know."

He stood among the gently falling blossoms of the big quince—tree by the terrace. Then he suddenly drew Kirk to him, and said:

"I spoke of the garden being filled, to me, with the memory of children; did I not?"

Kirk remembered that he had—on May-day.

"A little boy and a little girl played here once," said the Maestro, "when the pools were filled, and the garden paths were trim. The little girl died when she was a girl no longer. The boy loved the sea too well. He left the garden, to sail the seas in a ship—and I have never seen him since."

"Was be your little boy?" Kirk hardly dared ask it.

"He was my little boy," said the Maestro. "He left the garden in the moonlight, and ran away to the ships. He was sixteen. Tell Kenelm not to love the sea too much."

"But Ken wouldn't go away from Phil and me," said Kirk; "I know he wouldn't."

Kirk knew nothing of the call that the looming gray sails of the Celestine had once made.

"I thought," said the Maestro, "that the