“It may better be here,” said Mrs. Rheid, “and then any of us can get in at any time to see how things are without troubling anybody to find the key.  The captain will see that every door and window is safe and as we have the silver I don’t believe anybody will think of troubling the house.”

“Oh, dear no,” replied Mrs. West.  “I always leave my clothes out on the line and we never think of locking a door at night.”

“Our kitchen windows look over this way and I shall always be looking over.  Now come home with me and see that quilt I haven’t got finished yet for them.  I told your husband to come to our house for you, for you would surely be there.  I suppose Marjorie and Morris will walk back; we wouldn’t have minded it, either, on our eighteenth birthday.”

“Come, Marjorie, come see where I hang the key,” said Morris.

Marjorie followed him down the kitchen steps, across the shed to a corner at the farther end; he found a nail and slipped it on and then asked her to reach it.

Even standing on tip toe her upstretched hand could not touch it.

“See how I put the key of my heart out of your reach,” he said, seriously.

“And see how I stretch after it,” she returned, demurely.

“I will come with you and reach it for you.”

“How can you when you are demolishing plaster in Christopher Columbus’ house or falling into the crater of Mt.  Vesuvius?  I may want to come here that very day.”

“True; I will put it lower for you.  Shall I put it under this stone so that you will have to stoop for it?”

“Mrs. Rheid said hang it over the window, that has been its place for generations.  They lived here when they were first married, before they built their own house; the house doesn’t look like it, does it?  It is all made over new.  I am glad he gave it to Will.”

“He can build a house for Hollis,” said he, watching her as he spoke.

“Let me see you put the key there,” she returned, unconcernedly.

He hung the key on the nail over the small window and inquired if it were done to her satisfaction.

“Yes,” she said.  “I wonder how Linnet feels about going away from us all so far.”

“She is with her husband,” answered Morris.  “Aren’t you woman enough to understand that?”

“Possibly I am as much of a woman as you are.”

“You are years ahead of me; a girl at eighteen is a woman; but a boy at eighteen is a boy.  Will you tell me something out here among the wood?  This wood pile that the old captain sawed and split ten years ago shall be our witness.  Why do you suppose he gets up in winter before daylight and splits wood—­when he has a pile that was piled up twenty years ago?”

“That is a question worthy the time and place and the wood pile shall be our witness.”

“Oh, that isn’t the question,” he returned with some embarrassment, stooping to pick up a chip and toss it from him as he lifted himself.  “Marjorie, do you like Hollis better than you like me?”