Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/208

188 "I see," said Martin.

"So please take it," Kirk pursued, quite as though he had it in his pocket, "and I'll try to forget it."

"I don't know," said Martin. "The Maestro loves you now just about as much as he loved me when I was your size. His heart is divided—so let's divide the song, too. It'll belong to both of us. You—you made it rather easier for me to come back here; do you know that?"

"Why did you stay away so long?" Kirk asked.

Martin kicked a pebble into the basin of the pool, where it rebounded with a sharp click.

"I don't know," he said, after a pause. "It was very far away from the garden—those places down there make you forget a lot. And when the Maestro gave up his public life and retired, word trickled down to the tropics after a year or so that he'd died. And there's a lot more that you wouldn't understand, and I wouldn't tell you if you could."

Another pebble spun into the pool.

"Are you going to stay, now?"

"Yes, I'm going to stay."

"I'm glad," said Kirk. They sat still for