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Rh it closes after the Pettasantuck goes out. 'Lo thar, Skipper!" he added, rumpling up his son's hair as he passed him.

"Thank you so much!" murmured Joan.

She had half thought of leaving that day, after all. The prospect of being shut in such very close quarters with a small boy, for even a week, had taken the edge off her delight of the evening before. But now that Pemberley had actually written for a permit and had brought her trunk, she really could not fly off for no obvious reason.

She was rather silent during breakfast, and the conversation was, for the most part, between Garth and his father.

"Fogger, what's a sea-banana look like?"

"A what?" said Jim. "(Would you mind passing me the butter, Miss Kirkland?) A which?"

"A sea-banana; I think I saw one."

"A sea-banana," said Pemberley, buttering a piece of bread, "is the fruit of the Sea-Bananyan, or push-cartius oceanus. How big was this one?"

Garth laid down his spoon and indicated a length of about six inches between two brown hands.