“She wun’t, she wun’t.  Where you goin’?”

“To the harbour, to see if all the good things have come for the other little boys and girls.”

“Oh la-la!  Good things and bad things come by the boat.  Sometime it’ll sink and drown ’em all.”

“Little rascal!” and he waved his hand and went on.

“Late, isn’t she, Carre?” he asked, as he leaned over the sea-wall with the rest.

“She’s late, sir.”

“I hope nothing’s happened to her.  I’ll never forgive her if she’s made an end of my sweet things for the kiddies.”

“She’ll come.”

And she came.  With a shrill peal she came round the Burons and made for the harbour.

And Graeme, wedged into the corner of the iron railing where it looks out to sea, to make sure at the earliest possible moment that that which he had come to meet was there, met of a sudden more than he had looked for.

“Well ...  I’ll be hanged!” he jerked to himself, and then began to laugh internally.

For, standing on the upper deck of the small steamer, and looking, somehow, very much out of place there, was a tall but portly young gentleman, in a bowler hat and travelling coat and a monocle, whose face showed none of the usual symptoms of the Sark lover.  To judge from his expression, the little island impressed him anything but favourably.  It offered him none of the relaxations and amusements to which he was accustomed.  It looked, on the face of it, an uncivilised kind of a place, out of which a man might be ejected without ceremony if he chose to make himself objectionable.

Graeme kept out of sight among the other crowders of the quay till the bowler hat came bobbing up the gangway.  Then he smote its owner so jovially on the shoulder that his monocle shot the full length of its cord and the hat came within an ace of tumbling overboard.

“Hello, Pixley!  This is good of you.  You’re just in time to give us your blessing.”

“Aw!  Hello!” said Charles Svendt, agape at the too friendly greeting.  “That you, Graeme?”

“The worst half of me, my boy.  Margaret’s up at the house.  You’ll be quite a surprise to her.”

“Aw!” said Charles Svendt thoughtfully, as he readjusted his eyeglass.  “Demned queer place, this!” and he gazed round lugubriously.

“It is that, my boy.  Queerer than you think, and queerer people.”

“Aw!  Is there any—­aw—­place to stop at?”

“Thinking of stopping over night?  Oh yes, several very decent hotels.”

“Aw!  Which are you at yourself now?”

“I?  Oh, I’m a resident.  I’ve got a house here.”

“Dooce you have!  Well, now, where would you stop if you were me?”

“Well, if I were you I should stop at the Old Government House—­”

“Right!  Whereabouts is it?”

“It’s over in Guernsey.  Boat returns at five sharp.”

“Aw!  Quite so!  Very good!  But I’ve got—­er—­business here, don’t you know.”