were alone again at Wastewater, but with the two little girls to take their places as the children of the old place. Flora’s child, Sylvia, was a superbly proud little creature, tall, imperious, with scarlet cheeks, the white Fleming skin, the black Fleming eyes, indeed as absolute a “black Fleming” as ever had been born. Lily’s Gabrielle, three years younger, was a thin, nervous, tawny-headed little creature, full of impish excitements and imaginings. Roger would find the two little girls, when he came back weary-hearted and sick, playing “flower ladies” with much whispering and subdued laughter in the old garden, or penning crabs and small sea creatures in pebbly prisons on the shore.

One day, only a few weeks before his death, Roger had a long talk with David, walking back and forth along the garden paths that were sweating and panting under the breath of an untimely summer day in mid-May. There was no sun; a sort of milky mist lay over the sea; the warm plants dripped, and smelled of hothouses. David remembered watching the slow[21] silky heaving of the obscured ocean as his stepfather talked.

[21]

“I made my will when you were only a baby, Dave—when Tom was born. That’s—my God, that’s twenty years ago. But I put a codicil in a week or two back, giving Will’s child—Sylvia here—the whole of it in case—he may have got mixed up in this sea warfare, you know—in case the boy never comes home. But he will! I gave Will’s widow—poor Flora—all that my own mother left, when Will died; that’ll take care of her and of Sylvia; Tom’ll see that they stay here at Wastewater if they want to. And Flora’ll care for poor Lily’s child. Your father fixed you pretty well—I’ve left you the Boston houses to remember your stepfather by. You’ve been like my own son to me, David. I’ve had a long run for my money,” Roger said somewhat sadly that same evening, looking up at his own portrait over the mantel, when the men were alone in the sitting room. “But a better man would have made a better job of it! Tom’ll come home, though, and there’ll be Flemings here again, boys and girls, David, to keep the old place warm.”

“I hope you’ll keep it warm yourself,” David had answered, cheerfully. “You’re not fifty-three yet!”

“No, Dave—I’ve lived too hard. I’ve broken the machinery,” Roger said; and it was true. “I remember my twenty-first birthday,” he went on, musingly, “when Oates turned the estate over to me. He was a nice fellow—forty, I suppose, making perhaps six thousand a year, and with half-a-dozen children. Homely little sandy fellow—he doesn’t look a day older[22] to-day. I 

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