Contrary, however, to Fogarty’s hopes and surmises, Archie had forgotten neither Sandy’s insult nor Scootsy’s epithet.  “He’s a pick-up” and “he ain’t got no mammy” kept ringing in his ears as he walked back up the beach to his home.  He remembered having heard the words once before when he was some years younger, but then it had come from a passing neighbor and was not intended for him.  This time it was flung square in his face.  Every now and then as he followed the trend of the beach on his way home he would stop and look out over the sea, watching the long threads of smoke being unwound from the spools of the steamers and the sails of the fishing-boats as they caught the light of the setting sun.  The epithet worried him.  It was something to be ashamed of, he knew, or they would not have used it.

Jane, standing outside the gate-post, shading her eyes with her hand, scanning the village road, caught sight of his sturdy little figure the moment he turned the corner and ran to meet him.

“I got so worried—­aren’t you late, my son?” she asked, putting her arm about him and kissing him tenderly.

“Yes, it’s awful late.  I ran all the way from the church when I saw the clock.  I didn’t know it was past six.  Oh, but we’ve had a bully day, mother!  And we’ve had a fight.  Tod and I were pirates, and Scootsy Mulligan tried to—­”

Jane stopped the boy’s joyous account with a cry of surprise.  They were now walking back to Yardley’s gate, hugging the stone wall.

“A fight!  Oh, my son!”

“Yes, a bully fight; only there were seven of them and only two of us.  That warn’t fair, but Mr. Fogarty says they always fight like that.  I could have licked ’em if they come on one at a time, but they got a plank and crawled up—­”

“Crawled up where, my son?” asked Jane in astonishment.  All this was an unknown world to her.  She had seen the wreck and had known, of course, that the boys were making a playhouse of it, but this latter development was news to her.

“Why, on the pirate ship, where we’ve got our Bandit’s Home.  Tod is commodore and I’m first mate.  Tod and I did all we could, but they didn’t fight fair, and Scootsy called me a ‘pick-up’ and said I hadn’t any mother.  I asked Mr. Fogarty what he meant, but he wouldn’t tell me.  What’s a ‘pick-up,’ dearie?” and he lifted his face to Jane’s, his honest blue eyes searching her own.

Jane caught her hand to her side and leaned for a moment against the stone wall.  This was the question which for years she had expected him to ask—­one to which she had framed a hundred imaginary answers.  When as a baby he first began to talk she had determined to tell him she was not his mother, and so get him gradually accustomed to the conditions of his birth.  But every day she loved him the more, and every day she had put it off.  To-day it was no easier.  He was too young, she knew, to take in its full meaning,