162 Make-Belheve

Then she spoke very softly, not looking in
his direction :

“For a long time?”

“Tm afraid so?” he answered, gravely.

“You won't come back to work when
the summer is over, as the others do?”
asked Doris, thinking of the artists, her
friends.

‘Tm afraid not,” he said. “I shall have
to stop out there and work. More than
one summer will go by before I see you
again: I shall be quite an old man. But
I must send you a gold nugget one of
these days, and some precious stones for
rings and brooches, if I can find them, for
I want you to remember me.”

“J shall remember,” said Doris, re-
solutely. ‘But you must not stay too
long, or you will be changed. I shall want
to know you at once, even though all the
others think you are a stranger, and your
own dog barks at you when you get to
your home. Come back before you are

old.”