"Perhaps they come to see you," hedged Marcia feebly.

"Me! Now Marcia, pray do not resort to deceit and attempt to poke this legion of mermen off on me. As a relative, I insist on having a truthful, respectable aunt. Consider my youth. Isn't it your Christian duty to set me a good example? Whether you wed any of these nautical worshippers or not is your own affair. But at least honesty compels you to acknowledge they're your property."

A shadow, fleet as the rift in a summer cloud, passed over Marcia's face, but transient as it was[52] Sylvia, sensitively attuned and alert to changes of mood in others, noticed it.

[52]

"What a little beast I am, Marcia," she cried, throwing her arm impulsively about the other woman. "Forgive my thoughtlessness. I wouldn't have hurt you for the world. You know I never saw Uncle Jason. He left home when I was a child and is no reality to me. Even mother remembered him only as he was when a boy. She kept a little picture of him on her bureau, and on his birthdays always placed flowers beside it. She was fond of him, because he was only six when Grandmother died. After that, Mother took care of him and brought him up. She worried a good deal about him, I'm afraid, for it was a great responsibility and she herself was nothing but a girl. However, she did the best she could."

Sylvia stole a look at Marcia who had stiffened and now stood with eyes fixed on the misty world outside.

"Mother felt sorry, hurt, that Uncle Jason should have left home as he did, and never came back to see her. He was an impulsive, hot-headed boy and she said he resented her watchfulness and authority. But even though he ran away in a moment of anger, one would think years of absence would have smoothed away his resentment.

"For a little while he wrote to her; then gradually even his letters stopped. She never knew what sort[53] of a man he became. Once she told me she supposed there must be lots of mothers in the world who merely sowed and never reaped—never saw the results of their care and sacrifice."

[53]

"Jason—Jason loved your mother," Marcia murmured in a voice scarcely audible. "I am sure of that."

"But if he loved her, why didn't he come to see her? I know it was a long journey, but if he could only have come once—just once. It would have meant so much!"

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