lawn, the lady waving her racket as she emphasized her remarks, and the
Doctor listening with slanting head and little nods of agreement.
Against the rails at the near end Harold was leaning in his flannels
talking to the two sisters, who stood listening to him with their long
dark shadows streaming down the lawn behind them. The girls were
dressed alike in dark skirts, with light pink tennis blouses and pink
bands on their straw hats, so that as they stood with the soft red of
the setting sun tinging their faces, Clara, demure and quiet, Ida,
mischievous and daring, it was a group which might have pleased the eye
of a more exacting critic than the old sailor.

"Yes, he looks happy, mother," he repeated, with a chuckle. "It is not
so long ago since it was you and I who were standing like that, and I
don't remember that we were very unhappy either. It was croquet in our
time, and the ladies had not reefed in their skirts quite so taut. What
year would it be? Just before the commission of the Penelope."

Mrs. Hay Denver ran her fingers through his grizzled hair. "It was when
you came back in the Antelope, just before you got your step."

"Ah, the old Antelope! What a clipper she was! She could sail two
points nearer the wind than anything of her tonnage in the service. You
remember her, mother. You saw her come into Plymouth Bay. Wasn't she a
beauty?"

"She was indeed, dear. But when I say that I think that Harold is not
happy I mean in his daily life. Has it never struck you how thoughtful,
he is at times, and how absent-minded?"

"In love perhaps, the young dog. He seems to have found snug moorings