AFTER YOU, MONSIEUR?

Jim had no desire to create a sensation among his friends at the old red house; but as he left the pine grove all his instincts led him to flee in another direction.  He did not fully realize just what had happened to him, but he was conscious of having received a very hard jolt, indeed.  The house, full of happy associations as it was, was just now too tantalizing a place.  Aleck had won out, and he and Melanie were radiating that peculiar kind of lover’s joy which shines on the eve of matrimony.  Jim wished them well—­none better—­but he also wished they wouldn’t make such a fuss over these things.  Get it done and out of the way, and the less said about it the better.  In fact, Jim’s buoyant and sunny spirit went into eclipse; he lost his holiday ardor, and trudged over the hill and into the shore road in a state of extreme dejection.

But he lingered on the way, diverted almost against his will by the sight of fishing smacks putting into harbor, an island steamer rounding a distant cliff, and the Sea Gull lying motionless just within the breakwater.  Women may be unkind, but a ship is a ship, after all.  One can not nurse the pain even of a shattered heart when running before a stiff wind with the spinnaker set and an open sea ahead.

The thought decided him.  The sea should be his bride.  Jim did not stop to arrange, at the moment, just how this should be brought about, but his determination was none the less firm.  He became sentimental to the extent of reflecting, vaguely, that this was but philosophic justice.  The sea had not conquered him—­far from it; neither should She conquer him.  He would follow the sea, the path of glamour, the home of the winged foot and the vanishing sail, the road to alien and mysterious lands—­

Thus Jimmy, in reaction from the Arctic douche to which his emotional self had been subjected.  He was, figuratively speaking, blue with the cold, but trying valiantly to warm himself.

As he gazed at the Sea Gull, asleep on the flood tide, cutting a gallant figure in the glowing sunset, he felt an overmastering longing to be aboard.  He would stay on the yacht until Chamberlain came, at least; possibly all night.

Having made up his mind on this point, James persuaded himself that he felt better.  Philosophy is a friend in need, after all.  Why should one failure in getting one’s desires crush the spirit?  He would make a right-about-face, travel for a year on a sailing vessel, see the world.  That was it.  Hang the shoe business!

Immersed in mental chaos such as these fragments of thought suggest, Jim did not perceive that he was being overtaken, until a slow greeting came to his ears.

“Good evening, friend.”  It was the deliberate, wide-eyed youth of the Reading-room.

“Ah, good evening.”

“If you are on your way to the Sailors’ Reading-room, I wish to inform you that I have been obliged to lock up for to-night, on account of an urgent errand at the village.”  Jimmy stared vacantly for a moment at the pale, washed-out countenance of his interlocutor.  “I thought I’d tell you,” the youth went on in his copy-book style, “so as to save your taking the long walk.  I am the librarian of the Reading-room.”