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 hymn to the sun, and dive head first into the canyon, for there won't be anything to live for, except Keble and Miriam, and they're only the land I'm a fish on, whereas you're the water I'll be a fish out of!"

To which Dare had instantly retorted, "Indeed I'm not the water you're a fish in. I'm the whale you're a swordfish attacking, and I shall be glad to get back east where there's nothing I can't either swallow or out-swim."

Miriam had been exasperated at not being able to read between the bantering lines. For there must be a situation, she reasoned; two such abounding persons, no matter how adroit, could never have got so far into each others' minds without having got some distance into each other's blood.

But the situation, whatever it was, was not divulged, and Miriam was denied whatever solace her own unruly heart might have derived from the knowledge that Keble's wife's heart was also unruly.

Whether Louise's sense of duty had a share in it or not, a "him" was duly produced and ecstatically made at home. Even his mother ended by admitting that he was "not a bad little beast." She had vetoed Keble's plan to import a nurse from England, and had trained Katie Salter for the post. As motherhood had once been Katie's passionate avocation, Louise could think of no better way to translate into deeds the spirit of her outlandish funeral sermon on neighborliness than to promote Katie from the wash-house to the nursery.