“Susie, I did call.  In my heart I have called all night.”

“Yes, I know,” said Susie.  “When I woke and saw the sailor, I thought it was the ferryman.”

“I had paid,” said Mrs. Beauchamp.

“Oh, I knew you would,” said Susie.

Mrs. Beauchamp took the rug that Mr. Amherst threw to her, and folded it close and warm about Susie’s wet locks and damp body; and presently the difficult, sobbing breaths grew quieter, but her mother knew that she was not asleep by the fierce pressure of her fingers.

The day was breaking as the boat was beached, and a dozen willing hands pulled her high and dry.  The sea-birds were awake, fluttering about the head of the island; the ebbing tide had left the rocks very black and bare.

When they set Susie on her feet she was too stiff to stand alone, and never for one moment did she loose her hold of her mother’s dress.  It was the Royal Navy that finally took her into wonderfully tender keeping, and carried her up the steps and along the Parade, and laid her, still wrapped in the rug, on her own white bed, that nurse had made comfortably ready.

Dickie woke flushed and warm from his rosy sleep when they brought him in, and looked at the old sailor with round, bewildered eyes.

“Is it Father Neptune?” he asked.

“No, darling, no.”

“Oh, I see he hasn’t got his three-pronged fork.  Is it Nelson then?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Beauchamp, and her laugh was very near tears.—­“You will tell the twins at once, please,” she said to Mr. Amherst as she said good-bye.  “I cannot bear to feel that they may be awake and waiting.”

But Dot and Dash had not passed a sleepless night of misery.  Long ago, tired out with sorrow, they had fallen asleep on the nursery window-sill, and dreamt that they were sailing on unknown seas in fairy boats!

CHAPTER XIII.

And the wonderful part of it all was that Susie was not even ill!  She slept “into the middle of next week,” as nurse expressed it; but it was a deep, steady, peaceful sleep, quite undisturbed by any commotion around her.  Amy sat most of the morning crouched up on the floor, just inside the room, and waited for the opening of those brown eyes; whilst nurse had even got Dick and baby safely dressed and out on the sands before Susie’s eyelids quivered, and she stretched her stiff limbs, and started up with a cry, “Mother!”

“My darling Susie!”

“O mother!  I was so afraid you were a dream.”

“Then what are you?”

“A troublesome comfort.  Nurse said so, and it is true.”

She sat straight up in bed, with her knees drawn up and her hands clasped round them.  Her hair was rough, and there were no little stiff pigtails telling of nurse’s energetic brushing.  On her hands there were bruises and scratches that hurt her; but nothing mattered now that she was within reach of the comfortable arms, and could lay her head on the blue serge knee.