d it discomforting to a
sore hind-leg, so gave it up and spat at him instead.

"And, moreover, I won't have you at my party."

"Hou-hou! I'm coming. Ma'm'zelle she ask me."

"I'll tell her to send you back-word."

"She wun't, she wun't. Where you goin'?"

"To the harbour, to see if all the good things have come for the other
little boys and girls."

"Oh la-la! Good things and bad things come by the boat. Sometime it'll
sink and drown 'em all."

"Little rascal!" and he waved his hand and went on.

"Late, isn't she, Carre?" he asked, as he leaned over the sea-wall
with the rest.

"She's late, sir."

"I hope nothing's happened to her. I'll never forgive her if she's
made an end of my sweet things for the kiddies."

"She'll come."

And she came. With a shrill peal she came round the Burons and made
for the harbour.

And Graeme, wedged into the corner of the iron railing where it looks
out to sea, to make sure at the earliest possible moment that that
which he had come to meet was there, met of a sudden more than he had
looked for.

"Well ... I'll be hanged!" he jerked to himself, and then began to
laugh internally.

For, standing on the upper deck of the small steamer, and looking,
somehow, very much out of place there, was a tall but portly young
gentleman, in a bowler hat and travelling coat and a monocle, whose
face showed none of the usual symptoms of the Sark lover. To judge
from his expression, the little island impressed him anything but
favourably. It offered him none of the relaxations and amusements to
which he was accustomed. It looked, on the face of it, an uncivilised
kind of a place, out of which a man might be ejected without ceremony
if he chose to make himself objectionable.

Graeme kept out of sight among the other crowders of the quay till the
bowler hat came bobbing up the gangway. Then he smote its owner so
jovially on the shoulder that his monocle shot the full length of its
cord and the hat came within an ace of tumbling overboard.

"Hello, Pixley! This _is_ good of you. You're just in time to give us
your blessing."

"Aw! Hello!" said Charles Svendt, agape at the too friendly greeting.
"That you, Graeme?"

"The worst half of me, my boy. Margaret's up at the house. You'll be
quite a surprise to her."

"Aw!" said Charles Svendt thoughtfully, as he readjusted his eyeglass.
"Demned queer place, this!" and he gazed round lugubriously.

"It is that, my boy. Queerer than you th