"If you do I'll throw it in the Channel!" She looked equal to it, too,
and Jerry-Jo swore one angry word and stopped short. Then the girl's mood
changed. Quite gently and noiselessly she ran to Jerry-Jo and held the
opened book toward him. His keen eye fell upon the tear-stain, but his
coarser nature wrongly interpreted it.

"You imp!" he cried; "you spat upon it!"

But Priscilla shook her head. "No--it's a tear," she explained; "and, oh!
Jerry-Jo, it is mine--listen!--you cannot take it away from me."

And standing there upon the rock she repeated the words of the poem, her
rich voice rising and falling musically, and poor Jerry-Jo, hypnotized by
that which he could not comprehend, listened open-mouthed.

* * * * *

And now, again, it was spring and Priscilla was fourteen. Standing in the
garden path, her yoke across her shoulders, her ears straining at the
sound she heard, the old poem returned to her as it had not for years.
She faltered over the words at the first attempt, but with the second
they rushed vividly to her mind and seemed set to the music of that
"pat-pat-pat" sound on the water. An unaccountable excitement seized
her--that new but thrilling sense of nearness and kinship to life and the
lovely meaning of spring. She was no longer a little girl looking on at
life; she was part of it; and something was going to happen after the
long shut-in winter!

And presently the McAlpin boat came in sight around Lone Tree Island
and in it stood Jerry-Jo quite alone, paddling straight for the