d a candle to what's happened to
the Captain and Sherm. I have to go round pinching myself to believe it
is really so. I am almost afraid I will wake up and find it isn't,
still. Do you remember the picture of the Captain's little boy that
looked like Sherm? Well, it was Sherm. I can hear you say: 'What in the
dickens?' So, I'll put you out of suspense right away. The Captain's boy
was not dead, only lost, and he is Sherm or Sherm is he, whichever way
is right--I'm sure I don't know. You see the Captain went off on a long
voyage and got shipwrecked and was gone ages and ages. And Juanita's
father and mother were way off in California--they used to be Spanish.
That's what made them so foreign-looking in the locket picture. Well,
nobody knows exactly what happened. When the Captain got back to New
York and hunted up the boarding house where she had lived, they said she
had left six months before to go to her parents in California. Captain
Clarke wrote to California and found that her father was dead and her
mother hadn't heard from Juanita for months, and didn't know anything
about her coming home. Wasn't it dreadful? He paid detectives to hunt
her up, but they never found the slightest clue. The Captain thought
she'd gone off and left him on purpose--that's what made him such a
woman-hater--and so sad all the time. You wouldn't know him now. He
looks like Merry Christmas all the year round. You should see him gaze
at Sherm. Marian says it makes her want to cry, and Mother says it is
the most wonderful manifestation of Providence she has ever known. It
seems to me Providence would show more sense not to muddle things up so
in the first place. Sherm is as pleased as can be to find he really is
somebody, and he's awfully fond of the Captain, but you see he'd got so
used to loving the Darts as his own folks that he can't get unused to it
all of a sudden. He choked all up when he tried to call Captain Clarke
'Father,' and the Captain told him not to. There's heaps more to tell,
but Mother has been calling me for the past three minutes."

* * * * *

"No wonder Sherm feels dazed," said Dr. Morton two evenings later,
watching the boy, who was making a vain pretense of playing checkers
with Chicken Little.

He was so heedless that she swept his men off the board at each move, to
Chicken Little's disgust. Sherm usually beat her when he gave his mind
to the game. Presently, she picked up