“With the man that mends the boats?”

“No, with other sages.  You see when they’re afraid to stay down here on the ground with us any longer, afraid they’ll be hit with a question that will knock them over, they get into little air-ships they have and hurl the long words down at our heads until we’re too stunned to ask any more questions, and in such wise is learning disseminated.”

“I’ll ask the man that mends the boats if he’s got any air-ships.  He’s got most everything up there.”

“Up where?”

“Oh, up there,”—­with vague nod toward the head of the Island.

“He says he’d like to get acquainted with you, Aunt Kate.  He says he really believes you might be worth knowing.”

Thereupon Aunt Kate’s book fell to the floor with a thud of amazement that reverberated indignation.  “Well upon my word!” gasped she.  Then, recovering her book—­and more—­“Why what a kindly gentleman he must be,” she drawled.

“Oh yes, he’s kind.  He’s awful kind, I guess.  He’ll talk to you any time you want him to, Aunt Kate.  He’ll tell you just anything you want to know.  He said you must be a—­I forgot the word.”

“Oh no, you haven’t,” wheedled Aunt Kate.  “Try to think of it, dearie.”

“Can’t think of it now.  Shall I ask him again?”

“Certainly not!  How preposterous!  As if it made the slightest difference in the world!”

But it made difference enough for Aunt Kate to ask a moment later:  “And how did it happen, Worthie, that this kindly philosopher should have deemed me worth knowing?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  ‘Cause he liked the puppies’ names, I guess.  I told him how their mother was just Queen, but how they was Pourquoi and N’est-ce-pas—­a ’quirer and ’versalist and so then he said:  ’And which is Aunt Kate?’”

“Which is Aunt Kate?  What did he mean?”

“‘Is she content to be just Queen,’ he said, ’or is she’—­there was a lot of long words, you wouldn’t understand them, Aunt Kate—­I didn’t either—­’does she show a puppyish tendon’—­tendon something—­’to butt into the universe?’”

Suddenly Aunt Kate’s face grew pink and she sat straight.  “Worth, was this one of the men?”

“Oh no, Aunt Kate.  He’s not one of the men.  He’s just a man.  He’s the man that mends the boats.”

“‘The man that mends the boats!’ He sounds like a creature in flowing robes out of a mythology book, or the being expressing the high and noble sentiments calling everybody down in a new-thoughtish play.”

From time to time Worth would bring word of him.  What boats does he mend, Aunt Kate wanted to know, and what business has he landing them on our Island?  To which came the answer that he mended boats sick unto death with speed mania and other social disease, and that he didn’t land them on the Island, but on an island off the tip of the Island, a tiny island which the Lord had thoughtlessly left lying