the unaccountable gray eyes of john smiley vanton looked straight at his mother as she talked to him. they saved her a good deal. in a way they offset the black hair and the snub nose which made him so strongly resemble, outwardly at least, his father. and there was something wonderfully cool and strong, to the mother, in the grayness of those boyish eyes. granite colour.

“you aren’t telling me everything, mother,” said the boy.

she admitted it. in extenuation she promised that when he was older he should know the rest.

“you see, john, it really isn’t all mine to tell. if your father were dead it would be different. but there are some things which it is his right to tell you, and to be the only one to tell you, while he lives. suppose he were to come back in a month or a year; then he could take it up with you himself, and that would be much fairer.”

he considered this and approved it.

“i ought to tell you this,” his mother added, “there is nothing that dishonours your father in what i have not told.”

“you know it all?” he asked. “everything there is to tell?”

“i know all that there is to know,” she assured him, gravely.

[237]with this he was satisfied. they then spoke about his sister keturah, who was two years younger. “you’d better,” john told his mother, “tell her just what you’ve told me. she’ll hear it, anyway. guy and mermaid are only ten and six and don’t matter much. i’ll talk to guy.”

the masterful assumption of responsibility toward his younger brother pleased mary vanton. she checked an impulse to fold him to her. she offered her hand instead and he shook it, manifestly proud to conclude a compact of equals.

keturah vanton listened to her mother’s explanation silently. tears stood in her eyes, but her anxiety seemed to be mostly for her mother. she asked her no questions but kissed her with fervour. ten-year-old guy heard what his older brother told him with the incuriosity of a person engaged in an intensive task of teaching a new dog old tricks.

“play dead, dick,” he commanded. dick obeyed by rising hastily and loping away. at which six-year-old mermaid burst out crying as if her heart would break. for some time afterward she appeared to entertain the appalling notion that her father had disappeared rather than play dead.

mary vanton lost no time in settling her house in blue port and taking her family over to the beach. she and her husband had what was by no means the most expensive house on that sand barrier separating[238] bay and ocean, though it had always seemed to both of them the most comfortable. it fronted squarely on the ocean, bulwarked and protected by a tall and grassy line of dunes. there were a half dozen bedrooms and, on the ground floor, two immense living rooms with fireplaces. the house was constructed with unusual care and was habitable even in winter. and it gave, to the everlasting joy of those whose home it was, on the veritable sea. for the eternal atlantic, the “western ocean” of sailors, is a breeding ground of men. a cleanser and sweetener of continents and islands, the ocean of storms and the ocean of victories, at once the world’s greatest highway and the last, the perpetual frontier. a sight nowhere transcended!

mary vanton often looked upon it. it renewed in her the sense of wonder, the sense of mystery, the feeling of hope, without which the soul is extinguished, without which the very heart of life dies.