the
house-agents always want to be one minute and a half from the church and
the post-office, so we in the Secret House cannot afford to be more than
a minute and a half from the sea.

The Secret Friend was there, and he was gazing so earnestly down the
cliff that his hair was hanging forward most unbeautifully, and he was
rather red in the face. He was looking at a little boat which was on its
way towards the foot of the wriggly ladder. A schooner with the low sun
climbing down her rigging breathed on the breathing sea not far away. The
tide was high.

The oars of the little boat suddenly wavered and were paralysed. One of
the rowers made a quick movement with his hand.

"It's the Law," said the Secret Friend, and he tried spasmodically to
extinguish the sun with his hand. "It's the Law. The man with the tall
and dewy brow."

The Law, in a fat officious-looking boat, came sneaking round the near
point of the cliff. The air was so still, and the sea so calm, that you
could hear the sides of the boat grate against the cliff. And the air was
so clear that you could see the tall and dewy brow of the Law, as he
stood up and discovered the wriggly ladder.

"To have a face like that," said the Secret Friend, "is to challenge
fate. It makes me sick."

"What is this?" asked the Law, although there seemed little doubt that
the thing was a wriggly ladder. No one answered; so the Law rowed to the
foot of the thing in question. The Secret Friend jerked it up about six
feet, and secured it so.

The Law cleared its throat, and looked nervously at the schooner, and at
the sun, and at the other boat, and at the Secret Friend. The Law likes
to be argued with. Take away words and where is the Law? Silence always
annoys it.

Yet there was no silence in the Secret World. I remember how the roses
sang, and how the sea mourned over the confusion of its gentle dreams.
The knocking of the slow sea upon the cliff seemed like the ticking of
the great clock that is our world. It was a night when every horizon had
heaven calling from the other side.

The Story went on....

* * * * *

It was Chloris who brought Jay back to Number Eighteen Mabel Place, Brown
Borough. Chloris gave an unromantic snort and sat with unnecessary
clumsiness upon Jay's toe. So Jay returned, falling suddenly out of the
music of the sea into the band-of-hopeful music of distant Boy Scouts on
the march.

Number Eighteen Mabel P