ight and clear again, and I am going to
make things straight and clear with all the others."

"You can't," said Dan,--"not with those grand ladies in gold spectacles;
not with Polly's dad; maybe not with Polly herself. I'm all mixed up, and
out of line with them. And--and--" (Dan took the silken guard from his
neck) "I want you to give them back this gold watch, and tell them so."
(He slipped the Jack Horner prize into Miss Stella's hand.) "I'm not
asking anything and I'm not taking anything that comes to me like this.
And--and--" (he rose and stood under the crooked tree in all his straight,
sturdy strength) "Neb is down at the wharf with a load of clams. We passed
him as we came up. I'm not pushing in among the silk cushions any more.
I'm going home with him."

Which, with Miss Stella's sympathetic approval, he did at once.

When a little later the guests had all gone, and "The Polly" was taking
her white-winged way back to Killykinick with Dud, Jim, and Freddy; when
the jewelled lights had gone out, and the party was over, and all was
quiet on the starlit porch, Miss Stella returned Dan's watch and gave his
message. Even the two grandmammas, being really grandmammas at heart,
softened to it, and dad declared gruffly it had been a fool business
altogether, while Polly flung herself sobbing into her godmother's arms.

"O Dan,--poor Dan! He is the nicest boy I ever saw,--the nicest and the
kindest, Marraine! And now--now he will never come back here any more!"

"I don't think he will, Pollykins," was the low answer. "You see"
(Marraine dropped a light kiss on the nestling curls), "he was a newsboy
and a bootblack, and he does not deny it; while you--you, Pollykins--"

"Oh, I don't care, what he was!" interrupted Miss Polly,
tempestuously,--"I don't care what he was. I took him for my real true
friend, and I am not going to give up Dan as I gave up Meg Murray,
Marraine." Polly tightened her clasp around Miss Stella's neck so she
could whisper softly in her ear: "If he won't come back, you and I will
go after him; won't we, Marraine?"

Meanwhile, with his head pillowed on a pile of fish nets--very different,
we must confess, from the silken cushions of dad's pretty yacht,--and with
old Neb drowsily watching her ragged sail, Dan was back again in his own
line, beneath the guiding stars. It was a calm, beautiful night, and those
stars were at their brightest. Even Neb's dull wits seemed to kindle under
their radiance.