TMC 
oldest 
tfoufE: 
Page 679 
into young 1 manhood, you can never, 
never bring back the joy of the original 
proprietorship. It’s one thing loving 
and having a little fellow—it’s alto¬ 
gether something else to meet, on an 
almost equal footing, the man. You 
have put it off for such a long while 
that this son-and-father comradeship 
is now of short duration. When Son- 
nyboy is with me, these days, he can 
assert himself, in all the proud assur¬ 
ance of his approach to Twenty; when 
he is with you he is shy, reserved—he 
holds a great deal back, because you 
always recognize only the toddler in 
knee pants.” 
I think it was the heroism of our 
adventure on the moor lake that made 
me see through more intelligent eyes. 
He would never speak of it, least of 
all to his Mother, and I was only con¬ 
scious of the fact that he had indeed 
half - carried me through that angry 
water to safety and the shore, at a 
moment when I could not help myself. 
Only a Man could have done this. Only 
a Man—a real man—would have re¬ 
fused to make hotel gossip of the in¬ 
cident. 
* * * * * * 
And therefore I was selfish in claim¬ 
ing his hours up to the date of leaving. 
To be with him was the best apology 
I could make for the neglected years. 
There were occasions, I know, when he 
would have much rather been with the 
pretty girl or watching the swift ten¬ 
nis matches at the club, or off on a raft 
lark with boy comrades at the gorgeous 
beach. But to do him credit, he re¬ 
frained from showing disappointment. 
It was always, “Sure, Dad, I’ll go,” 
when my summons came. 
We covered a great deal of ground— 
the two. of us—rovers of all the Nan¬ 
tucket play-places. We spent added 
hours in the musty museum, dreaming 
over ivory snuff-boxes and caskets of 
jade and cruel, barberous war-hatchets, 
brought by whalers, long dead, to their 
home folks, after cruises into a mys¬ 
terious land, far across the horizon. 
We sat in the little barn where the 
veteran of a thousand nasty squalls 
whittled weather-vanes from wood, and 
painted the pine jackets and hats of 
sailor boys with vivid blues and reds. 
We went horseback riding across the 
moors, and drove through waving fields 
of wildrose and purple heather. We 
fished for little fellows in the lakes, 
and we waded for quohogs at dusk 
along the rim of the harbor. We came 
laughingly back from hikes which took 
us as far as Maddaket and The Plains, 
and even Surfside, with sprays of bay- 
berry aromatically tucked in 
our lapels. 
We climbed to the top gal¬ 
lery of the lighthouse at 
Sankatay Plead, and looked 
yearningly out over the 
memorable enchantment of 
sea, heads together, hand in 
hand, both thinking the same 
thoughts of adventure, I sup¬ 
pose, and yearning, in the 
way that men always yearn, for 
places and ports and spiced isles of 
the Never-to-Be Land. We rummaged 
through old houses, bearing their scars 
of Indian desecration, or sat, an hour 
at a time, on the grassy slope by the 
gray windmill, looking off to the waters 
again, on which a new sort of sun- 
(Continued on page 703) 
“DOWN 
EAST” 
the nshEte. village: 
