s very fond of you since you made that toy for
him,--he'll blow the sea up till the waves wash us back into deep
water.'

'But I'm afraid of the wind,' said Sep, 'it says things that frighten
me.'

'Oh very well,' said the mussels, 'we don't want you to be afraid. We
can die all right if necessary.'

Then Sep shivered and trembled.

'Go away,' said the thin sharp voices. 'We'll die--but we'd rather die
in our own brave company.'

'I know I'm a coward,' said Sep. 'Oh, wait a minute.'

'Death won't wait,' said the little voices.

'I can't speak to the wind, I won't,' said Sep, and almost at the same
moment he heard himself call out, 'Oh wind, please come and blow up the
waves to save the poor mussels.'

The wind answered with a boisterous shout--

'All right, my boy,' it shrieked, 'I'm coming.' And come it did. And
when it had attended to the mussels it came and whispered to Sep in his
attic. And to his great surprise, instead of covering his head with the
bed-clothes, as usual, and trying not to listen, he found himself
sitting up in bed and talking to the wind, man to man.

'Why,' he said, 'I'm not afraid of you any more.'

'Of course not, we're friends now,' said the wind. 'That's because we
joined together to do a kindness to some one. There's nothing like that
for making people friends.'

'Oh,' said Sep.

'Yes,' said the wind, 'and now, old chap, when will you go out and seek
your fortune? Remember how poor your father is, and the fortune, if you
find it, won't be just for you, but for your father and mother and the
others.'

'Oh,' said Sep, 'I didn't think of that.'

'Yes,' said the wind, 'really, my dear fellow, I do hate to bother you,
but it's better to fix a time. Now when shall we start?'

'We?' said Sep. 'Are you going with me?'

'I'll see you a bit of the way,' said the wind. 'What do you say now?
Shall we start to-night? There's no time like the present.'

'I do hate going,' said Sep.

'Of course you do!' said the wind, cordially. 'Come along. Get into your
things, and we'll make a beginning.'

So Sep dressed, and he wrote on his slate in very big letters, 'Gone to
seek our fortune,' and he put it on the table so that his mother should
see it when she came down in the morning. And he went out of the cottage
and the wind kindly shut the door after him.

The wind gently pushed him down to the shore, and there he got into his
father's boat, which was called the _Septimus and Susie_,