“You’ll have to learn,” he said, to Barbara, with a new gentleness in his tone.  “Your balance is entirely different and these muscles and joints will have to learn to work.  Keep up the exercise and the massage.  You can have a cane, if you like, but no crutches.  Is there someone who would help you for an hour or so every day?”

“Roger would,” she said, “or Aunt Miriam.”

“Better get Roger—­he’ll be stronger.  And also more willing,” he thought, but he did not say so.  “Don’t tire yourself, but walk a little every day, as you feel like it.”

When he went, he took the crutches with him.  “You might be tempted,” he explained, “if they were here, and your father’s cane is all you really need.  Be a good girl and I’ll come up again soon.”

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  A Great Success]

Eloise was watching from the piazza of the hotel, and, when he came in sight, she went up the road to meet him.

“Oh, Allan,” she cried, breathlessly, as she saw the crutches.  “Is she——?”

“She’s all right.  It’s one of the most successful operations ever done in that line, even if I do say it as shouldn’t.”

“Of course,” smiled Eloise, looking up at him fondly.  “I know that.”

They walked together down to the shore, followed by the deep and open interest of the rocking-chair brigade, marshalled twenty strong, on the hotel veranda.  It was October and the children had all been taken back to school.  The exquisite peace of the place was a thing to dream about and be spoken of only in reverent whispers.

The tide was going out.  Allan hurled one of the crutches far out to sea.  “They’ve worked faithfully and long,” he said, “and they deserve a little jaunt to Europe.  Here goes.”

He was about to throw the other, but Eloise took it from him.  “Let me,” she suggested.  “I’d love to throw a crutch over to Europe.”

She tried it, with the customary feminine awkwardness.  It did not go beyond the shallow water, and speared itself, sharp end downward, in the soft sand.

Allan laughed uproariously and Eloise coloured with shame.  “Never mind,” she said, with affected carelessness, “you couldn’t have made it stick up in the sand like that, and I think it’ll get to Europe just as soon as yours does, so there.”

They sat down on the beach, sheltered from prying eyes by a sand dune, and directly opposite the crutch, which wobbled with every wave that struck it.  “Think what it means,” said Eloise, “and think what it might mean.  It might be part of a shipwreck, or someone who needed it very much might have dropped it accidentally out of a boat, or the one who had it might have died, after long suffering.”

“Or,” continued Allan, “someone might have outgrown the need of it and thrown it away, as the tiny dwellers in the sea cast off their shells.”

[Sidenote:  Thanks]