The Happy Venture | Page 7

mass of
her canvas blotted half the stars. She was sailing, that night, for Rio de
Janeiro.
Ken slipped into the shadow of a pile-head, waiting his chance. His
heart beat suffocatingly; his hands were very cold. Quietly he stepped
under the gang-plank, swung a leg over it, drew himself aboard, and lay

flat on deck beside the rail of the Celestine in a pool of shade. A man
tripped over him and stumbled back with an oath. The next instant Ken
was hauled up into the light of a lantern.
"Stowaway, eh?" growled a squat man in dungaree. "Chuck him
overboard, Sam, an' let him swim home to his mamma."
In that moment, Ken knew that he could never have sailed with the
Celestine, that he would have slipped back to the wharf before she cast
loose her hawsers. He looked around him as if he had just awakened
from sleep-walking and did not know where he found himself. He
gazed up at the gaunt mainmast, black against the green night sky, at
the main topsail, shaking still as the men hauled it taut.
"I'm not a stowaway," he said; "I'm going ashore now."
He walked down the gang-plank with all the dignity he could muster,
and never looked behind him as he left the wharf. He could hear the
rattle of the _Celestine's_ tackle, and the _boom, boom_ of the sails.
Once clear of the docks he ran, blindly.
"Fool!" he whispered. "Oh, what a fool! what a senseless idiot!"
The house was dark as he turned in at the gate. He stopped for an
instant to look at its black bulk, with Orion setting behind the
chimney-pots.
"I was going to leave them--all alone!" he whispered fiercely. "Good
Heavens!"
He removed the letter silently from Felicia's door,--he was reassured by
seeing its white square before he reached it,--and crept to his own room.
There a shadowy figure was curled up on the floor, and it was crying.
"Kirk! What's up?" Ken lifted him and held him rather close.
"You weren't here," Kirk sniffed; "I got sort of rather l-lonely, so I
thought I'd come in with you--and the b-bed was perfectly empty, and I

couldn't find you. I t-thought you were teasing me."
"I was taking a little walk," Ken said. "Here, curl up in bed--you're
frozen. No, I'm not going away again--never any more, ducky. It was
nice in the garden," he added.
"The garden?" Kirk repeated, still clinging to him. "But you smell
of--of--oh, rope, and sawdust, and--and, Ken, your face is wet!"
* * * * *
Mrs. Sturgis protested bitterly against going away. She felt quite able to
stay at home. To be sure, she couldn't sleep at all, and her head ached
all the time, and she couldn't help crying over almost everything--but it
was impossible that she should leave the children. In spite of her
half-hysterical protests, the next week saw her ready to depart for
Hilltop with Miss McClough, who was to take the journey with her.
"You needn't worry a scrap," laughed Felicia, quite convincingly, at the
taxi door. "We've seen Mr. Dodge, and there'll be money enough. You
just get well as quick as ever you can."
"Good-by, my darlings," faltered poor Mrs. Sturgis, quite ready to
collapse again. "Good-by, Kirk--my precious, precious baby! How can
I!"
And the taxicab moved away, giving them just one glimpse of their
mother with her poor head on Miss McClough's capable shoulder.
"Well," Ken remarked, "here we are."
And there was really nothing more to be said on the subject.
Such a strange house! Maggie and Norah gone; Felicia cooking queer
meals--principally poached eggs--in the kitchen; Miss Bolton failing to
appear every morning at ten o'clock as she had done for the last three
years; Mother gone, and not even a letter from her--nothing but a
type-written report from the physician at Hilltop.

Gone also, as Kirk discovered, was the lowboy beside the library door.
It was a most satisfactory piece of furniture. From its left-hand corner
you could make a direct line to the window-seat. It also had smoothly
graceful brass handles, and a surface delicious to the touch. When Kirk,
stumbling in at the library door, failed to encounter it as usual, he was
as much startled as though he had found a serpent in its stead. He tried
for it several times, and when his hands came against the bookshelves
he stopped dead, very much puzzled and quite lost. Felicia found him
there, standing still and patiently waiting for the low-boy to materialize
in its accustomed place.
"Where is it!" he asked her.
"It's not there, honey," she said. "We're going to a different house, and
it's sent away."
"A different house! When? What do you mean?"
"We've finished renting this