the window and saw the ginger barber coming dejectedly around to the side gate from the kitchen—­I knew the scene he had had with Judy, about the bottle encounters of the night before—­saw Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street by Mrs. Johnson; saw the doctor’s car go chucking hurriedly in the garage and then my spirit turned itself to the wall and refused to be comforted.  I tried my best, but failed to respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly gathering in a cloud of gloom when a blue gingham, rompers-clad sunbeam burst into the room.

“Git your night-gown and your toothbresh quick, Molly, if you want to pack ’em in my trunk!” he exclaimed with his eyes dancing and a curl standing straight up on the top of his head, as it has a habit of doing when he is most excited.  “You can’t take nothing but them ’cause I’m going to put in a rope to tie the whale with when I ketch him, and it’ll take up all the rest of the room.  Git ’em quick!”

“Yes, lover, I’ll get them for you, but tell Molly where it is you are going to sail off with her in that trunk of yours?” I asked, dropping into the game as I have always done with him, no matter what game of my own pressed when he called.

“On the ocean where the boats go ’cross and run right over a whale.  Don’t you remember you showed me them pictures of spout whales in a book, Molly?  Doc says they comes right up by the ship and you can hear ’em shoot water and maybe a iceberg, too.  Which do you want to ketch most, Molly, a iceberg or a whale?” His eager eyes demanded instant decision on my part of the nature of capture I preferred.  My mind quickly reverted to those two ponderous and intense epistles I had got within the hour and I lay back in my chair and laughed until I felt almost merry.

“The iceberg, Billy, every time,” I said at last.  “I just can’t manage whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means hot.  I like icebergs, or I think I should if I could catch one.”

“I don’t believe you could, Molly, but maybe Doc will let you put a rope and a long hook in his trunk to try with if your clothes go into mine.  His is a heap the biggest anyway and Nurse Tilly said he oughter put my things in his, but I cried and then he went up-stairs and got out that little one for me.  Come see ’em!”

“What do you mean, Billy?” I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me like lightning.  “You’re just playing go-away, aren’t you?”

“No, I ain’t playing, Molly!” he exclaimed excitedly.  “Me and you and Doc is a-going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here.  Doc ast me about it this morning and I told him all right and you could come with us, if you was good.  He said couldn’t I go without you if you was busy and couldn’t come and I told him you would put things down and come if I said so.  Won’t you, Molly?  It won’t be no fun without you and you’d cry all by yourself with me gone.”  His little face was all drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I felt was coming down upon me.