Mr. Chalk remained silent.

“What made you think of such things?” persisted Mrs. Chalk.

Mr. Chalk shook his head; no satisfactory reply was possible.  “My thoughts were far away,” he said, at last.

His wife bridled and said, “Oh, indeed!” Mr. Chalk’s mother, dead some ten years before, had taken a strange pride—­possibly as a protest against her only son’s appearance—­in hinting darkly at a stormy and chequered past.  Pressed for details she became more mysterious still, and, saying that “she knew what she knew,” declined to be deprived of the knowledge under any consideration.  She also informed her daughter-in-law that “what the eye don’t see the heart don’t grieve,” and that it was better to “let bygones be bygones,” usually winding up with the advice to the younger woman to keep her eye on Mr. Chalk without letting him see it.

“Peckham Rye is a long way off, certainly,” added the indignant Mrs. Chalk, after a pause.  “It’s a pity you haven’t got something better to think of, at your time of life, too.”

Mr. Chalk flushed.  Peckham Rye was one of the nuisances bequeathed by his mother.

“I was thinking of the sea,” he said, loftily.

Mrs. Chalk pounced.  “Oh, Yarmouth,” she said, with withering scorn.

Mr. Chalk flushed deeper than before.  “I wasn’t thinking of such things,” he declared.

“What things? “said his wife, swiftly.

“The-the things you’re alluding to,” said the harassed Mr. Chalk.

“Ah!” said his wife, with a toss of her head.  “Why you should get red in the face and confused when I say Peckham Rye and Yarmouth are a long way off is best known to yourself.  It’s very funny that the moment either of these places is mentioned you get uncomfortable.  People might read a geography-book out loud in my presence and it wouldn’t affect me.”

She swept out of the room, and Mr. Chalk’s thoughts, excited by the magic word geography, went back to the island again.  The half-forgotten dreams of his youth appeared to be materializing.  Sleepy Binchester ended for him at Dialstone Lane, and once inside the captain’s room the enchanted world beyond the seas was spread before his eager gaze.  The captain, amused at first at his enthusiasm, began to get weary of the subject of the island, and so far the visitor had begged in vain for a glimpse of the map.

His enthusiasm became contagious.  Prudence, entering one evening in the middle of a conversation, heard sufficient to induce her to ask for more, and the captain, not without some reluctance and several promptings from Mr. Chalk when he showed signs of omitting vital points, related the story.  Edward Tredgold heard it, and, judging by the frequency of his visits, was almost as interested as Mr. Chalk.

“I can’t see that there could be any harm in just looking at the map,” said Mr. Chalk, one evening.  “You could keep your thumb on any part you wanted to.”