“Never mind insulting my birthplace, sir!”

“Oh! were you born here, Patsy?  Then I’ll give the town credit.  So, after you deserted me at Los Angeles—­”

“You still had Mrs. Montrose and her nieces, Maud and Flo Stanton.”

“I know, and I love them all.  But they became so tremendously busy that I scarcely saw them, and finally I began to feel lonely.  Those Stanton girls are chock full of business energy and they hadn’t the time to devote to me that you people did.  So I stood on the shore and looked at the Arabella until I mustered up courage to go aboard.  Surviving that, I made Captain Carg steam slowly along the coast for a few miles.  Nothing dreadful happened.  So I made a day’s voyage, and still ate my three squares a day.  That was encouraging.”

“I knew all the time it wasn’t the voyage that wrecked your stomach,” said Patsy confidently.

“What was it, then?”

“Ptomaine poisoning, or something like that.”

“Well, anyhow, I found I could stand ocean travel again, so I determined on a voyage.  The Panama Canal was just opened and I passed through it, came up the Atlantic coast, and—­the Arabella is at this moment safely anchored in the North River!”

“And how do you feel?” inquired Uncle John.

“Glorious—­magnificent!  The trip has sealed my recovery for good.”

“But why didn’t you go home, to your Island of Sangoa?” asked Beth.

He looked at her reproachfully.

“You were not there, Beth; nor was Patsy, or Uncle John.  On the other hand, there is no one in Sangoa who cares a rap whether I come home or not.  I’m the last of the Joneses of Sangoa, and while it is still my island and the entire population is in my employ, the life there flows on just as smoothly without me as if I were present.”

“But don’t they need the ship—­the Arabella?” questioned Beth.

“Not now.  I sent a cargo of supplies by Captain Carg when he made his last voyage to the island, and there will not be enough pearls found in the fisheries for four or five months to come to warrant my shipping them to market.  Even then, they would keep.  So I’m a free lance at present and I had an idea that if I once managed to get the boat around here you folks might find a use for it.”

“In what way?” inquired Patsy, with interest.

“We might all make a trip to Barbadoes, Bermuda and Cuba.  Brazil is said to be an interesting country.  I’d prefer Europe, were it not for the war.”

“Oh, Ajo, isn’t this war terrible?”

“No other word expresses it.  Yet it all seems like a fairy tale to me, for I’ve never been in any other country than the United States since I made my first voyage here from Sangoa—­the island where my eyes first opened to the world.”

“It isn’t a fairy tale,” said Beth with a shudder.  “It’s more like a horrible nightmare.”