Miss Browne said no, helmets were always worn--Coffee? Oh, my dear
child, how thankful I shall be!"

And Aunt Jane clung to me as of yore as I led her up the beach.




V

THE CAPTAIN'S LEGACY

When in my tender years I was taken to the matinee, usually the
most thrilling feature of the spectacle to me was the scene
depicted on the drop-curtain. I know not why only the decorators
of drop-curtains are inspired to create landscapes of such strange
enchantment, of a beauty which not alone beguiles the senses--I
speak from the standpoint of the ten-year-old--but throws wide to
fancy the gate of dreams. Directly I was seated--in the body--and
had had my hat taken off and been told not to wriggle, I vaulted
airily over the unconscious audience, over an orchestra engaged in
tuning up, and was lost in the marvelous landscape of the
drop-curtain. The adventures which I had there put to shame any
which the raising of the curtain permitted to be seen upon the
stage.

I had never hoped to recover in this prosaic world my long-lost
paradise of the drop-curtain, but morning revealed it to me here on
Leeward Island. Here was the feathery foliage, the gushing
springs, the gorgeous flowers of that enchanted land. And here