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“Well, thanks for the tea, and the lecture on poetry.”

“And marriage,” she answered. “I’ll look forward to meeting Mrs. Rodney Marsh some day.”

“You’ll be looking forward a mighty long time then” replied Marsh grimly. “Good-by.”

He mounted his horse and rode off. Ann called to the little girls, and they began packing up the tea-things. But when they reached home, and she was changing for dinner, she found that her old paper-covered copy of Thompson’s poems was missing. She must have forgotten to put it in her pocket when leaving the beach.

Well, no one ever visited the beach except themselves, and they were going down to bathe again on the following day. She would find it then. Yet, though she and the children searched diligently for the book on their next picnic, it was nowhere to be found. “I must have lost it riding home,” Ann thought regretfully, and grieved for her loss. She knew it would probably be impossible to replace the book in Wairiri. She had already discovered that new countries are not very greatly preoccupied with poets.