" cried the droll, wee man, stopping him, and
one would have thought he was calling a dog. "I'm not going to be called
Professor, and I won't Peterkin. Just Pete, as I was on board ship, as I
am to everybody, and must be to you.

"But just look here, Staysail, you're a sailor, and you can't make a
speech. Let me speak." And speak he did without waiting for a reply.

"It's all in a nutshell, dear Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop, and I'll tell you in
two or three sentences what your worthy sailor-brother would have kept
you up all night to hear. Now listen! Briton, you lie down! Good again!
Now I, Dan Peterkin, am a man who has been used to study hard, and think
hard. You follow me so far? Good again!

"Well, there is one thing has taken me years to work out, and that is,
where in this world gold and coal are to be found. And I've done it. I
can go right to the spots. One of them lies on an island right away up in
the Frozen North. And we're going there. Your brother, Mrs. Dunlop, is
going to take me.

"Well, we may have some hardships. Paff! What do we care? We shall win
such wealth as has never been seen before. You follow still? Good again!
Well, I go to a town in the north last spring, when the seal ships are
all there, and I look for an honest face. I find Staysail. I say to him:
'You give me a passage to Greenland, my friend.' He say: 'What for I give
you passage?' I smile. I take him by one button, and pull him all the way
into a private room of the hotel. Briton follows. We all dine well--we
all come out smiling--Briton too. And now, my friends, all is arranged.
We sail away and away and away next spring for the seas of ice and the
islands of gold.

"That is all. You have followed me? Good again!" And once more the
professor sat down, and the big arm-chair seemed to swallow him up.

* * * * *

Ara and Pansy lay awake a long time that night thinking of what Pete had
said. But the next day they went about their duties as usual. They did
not go to school, as they had a governess, of whom they were both very
fond. Nearly half their day would be spent out-of-doors with her and
Veevee. In spring and summer they would gather flowers inland, but what
they liked best was to play about on the sands, to go out boating with an
old seaman they knew, or climb the rocks and get into very steep and
giddy places.

[Illustration]

Poor Frank Dunlop was an orphan, and was now the adopted son of Ara's
fa