Oddly enough, Rachel’s sympathies were all with her father, in as far as she could understand the old quarrel.  She did not dream of disobeying her mother and she did not disobey her.  Never again did the child speak of her father; but Isabella had not forbidden her to think of him, and thenceforth Rachel thought of him constantly—­so constantly that, in some strange way, he seemed to become an unguessed-of part of her inner life—­the unseen, ever-present companion in all her experiences.

She was an imaginative child, and in fancy she made the acquaintance of her father.  She had never seen him, but he was more real to her than most of the people she had seen.  He played and talked with her as her mother never did; he walked with her in the orchard and field and garden; he sat by her pillow in the twilight; to him she whispered secrets she told to none other.

Once her mother asked her impatiently why she talked so much to herself.

“I am not talking to myself.  I am talking to a very dear friend of mine,” Rachel answered gravely.

“Silly child,” laughed her mother, half tolerantly, half disapprovingly.

Two years later something wonderful had happened to Rachel.  One summer afternoon she had gone to the harbor with several of her little playmates.  Such a jaunt was a rare treat to the child, for Isabella Spencer seldom allowed her to go from home with anybody but herself.  And Isabella was not an entertaining companion.  Rachel never particularly enjoyed an outing with her mother.

The children wandered far along the shore; at last they came to a place that Rachel had never seen before.  It was a shallow cove where the waters purred on the yellow sands.  Beyond it, the sea was laughing and flashing and preening and alluring, like a beautiful, coquettish woman.  Outside, the wind was boisterous and rollicking; here, it was reverent and gentle.  A white boat was hauled up on the skids, and there was a queer little house close down to the sands, like a big shell tossed up by the waves.  Rachel looked on it all with secret delight; she, too, loved the lonely places of sea and shore, as her father had done.  She wanted to linger awhile in this dear spot and revel in it.

“I’m tired, girls,” she announced.  “I’m going to stay here and rest for a spell.  I don’t want to go to Gull Point.  You go on yourselves; I’ll wait for you here.”

“All alone?” asked Carrie Bell, wonderingly.

“I’m not so afraid of being alone as some people are,” said Rachel, with dignity.

The other girls went on, leaving Rachel sitting on the skids, in the shadow of the big white boat.  She sat there for a time dreaming happily, with her blue eyes on the far, pearly horizon, and her golden head leaning against the boat.

Suddenly she heard a step behind her.  When she turned her head a man was standing beside her, looking down at her with big, merry, blue eyes.  Rachel was quite sure that she had never seen him before; yet those eyes seemed to her to have a strangely familiar look.  She liked him.  She felt no shyness nor timidity, such as usually afflicted her in the presence of strangers.