the home of his ancestors—once or twice a year, perhaps; then not again for another two or three seasons. He allowed an old lawyer at Chantico to lease island, farm, and house to the Probascos. They paid their modest rent and kept the mansion from destruction. They had long been its tenants.
Of course, the connection between these details became clearer in his later talks with the good farmer's wife; but Philip gathered enough in her scraps of explanation that afternoon and evening to interest his boyish love of romance and novelty and to fill his heart with gratitude for this hospitable situation.
Just before supper-time Gerald awoke.
"Philip," he called, "Philip! where have you gone?"
Touchtone hastened in from the kitchen. A few sentences with the sick boy gave him a delightful sense of relief. It was quite confirmed during the next half hour. Gerald's fever had almost departed. He was told the good news of the Probascos' return. On the first sight of his sympathetic hostess he "took to her" (so she expressed it}, "as if we'd never done nothing but spend our hull lives in this
