“Ah!” said Anne, pitifully.  And for a full moment there was silence.

Then Charles Rideout, the younger, came back to her, pushing his handkerchief into his coat pocket; and with a restored self-control.

“Too bad to bother you with our troubles,” he said, with a little smile like his father’s.  “To us, of course, it seems like the end of the world, but I am sorry to distress you!  Dad just doesn’t seem to grasp it, he hasn’t been excited, you know, but he doesn’t seem to understand.  I don’t know that any of us do!” he finished simply.

“Here they are!” Anne said warningly, as the two other men came down the stairs.

“Hello, Dad!” said young Rideout, easily and cheerfully, “I came to bring you home!”

“This is my boy, Mrs. Warriner,” said his father; “you see he’s turned the tables, and is looking after me!  I’m glad you came, Charley.  I’ve been telling your good husband, Mrs. Warriner,” he said, in a lower tone, “that we—­that I—­”

“Yes, I know!” Anne said, with her ready tenderness, and a little gasp like a child’s.

“So you will realize what impulse brought me here to-day,” the older man went on; “I was talking to my wife of this house only a day or two ago.”  His voice had become almost inaudible, and the three young people knew he had forgotten them.  “Only a day or two ago,” he repeated musingly.  And then, to his son, he added wistfully, “I don’t seem to get it through my head, my boy.  For a while to-day, I forgot—­I forgot.  The heart—­” he said, with his little old-world touch of dignity—­“the heart does not learn things as quickly as the mind, Mrs. Warriner.”

Anne had found something wistful and appealing in his smile before, now it seemed to her heartbreaking.  She nodded, without speaking.

“Dear old Dad,” said Charles Rideout, affectionately.  “You are tired out.  You’ve been doing too much, sir, you want sleep and rest.”

“Surely—­surely,” said his father, a little heavily.  Father and son shook hands with Jim and Anne, and the older man said gravely, “God bless you both!” as he and his son went down the wet path, in the shaft of light from the hall door.  At the gate the boy put his arm tenderly about his father’s shoulders.

“Oh, Anne, Anne,” said her husband as she clung to him when the door was shut, “I couldn’t live one day without you, my dearest!  But don’t—­don’t cry.  Don’t let it make you blue,—­he had his happiness, you know,—­he has his children left!”

Anne tightened her arms about his neck.

“I am crying a little for sorrow, Jim, dearest!” she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder.  “But I believe it is mostly—­mostly for joy and gratitude, Jim!”

THE TIDE-MARSH

“What are you going to wear to-night in case you can go, Mary Bell?” said Ellen Brewster in her lowest tones.