k. Judith bent to the great oars again and
toiled out into the bay. Her lips were set in the old familiar lines
of pain. In the distance was just visible a fleck of white and a
fleck of blue--Elise and the Dainty One on the sands.

"I never want to set eyes on them again--not on her, anyway!" thought
Judith as she toiled. "What did she want to speak to me for, in her
nice little mincing voice! She belongs to hotels and I belong to
the--sea. Blossom and I--what has she got to do with Blossom!"

But the little mincing voice had said, "I'd be pleased to see you--I
like you." It had said, "I'd be pleased to see Blossom."

"She sha'n't! I won't have her! I won't have Blossom see her!" Judith
stormed in her pain.

The picture of the little frail wisp of a child who would never walk
was so distinct to her--and this other picture of the Dainty One who
walked and laughed, "See me!" The two little pictures, side by side,
were more than Judith could bear.

The traps were nearly empty. It was going to be a poor lobster
season. To hotels like that one down the beach that would be a
disappointment. To Judith, who stood for fisher-folk, it would mean
serious loss. When the lobster season was a good one, more than one
little comfort and luxury found its way into more than one humble
fisher-home. And Blossom--Blossom would suffer if the lobster-traps
were empty. For Judith and her mother had agreed to set apart enough
of the lobster-money to get Blossom a wheel-chair. Judith had seen
one once on a trip to the nearest town, and ever since she had
dreamed about a little wheel-chair with Blossom in it. To wheel up
and down the smooth, hard sand, with Blossom laughing and crying,
"See me!"

"There's got to be lobsters!" Judith stormed, jerking up her traps
one after the other. "There _shall_ be lobsters!"

But she rowed back with the old brown dory almost as empty as when
she had rowed it toilsomely out to her traps.

There were but three Lynns in the small home upshore. Two years ago
there had been six, but father and the boys, one day, had gone out of
sight beyond the bay and had never come into sight again. It is the
sad way with those "who go down to the sea in ships."

Judith was the only man left to 'tend the traps and fish in the safer
waters of the bay. At fourteen one is young to begin toil like that.
Even at sixteen one is not old. But Judith's heart was as strong as
her pair of brown, boy-muscled arms. She and the old