Mr. Hadley was older than his wife by a number of years. He was beginning to turn gray when their sorrow came to them, and his hair whitened rapidly after that, and somehow he did not seem so tall as he had been; but, aside from that, one would not have seen any great change in him.
They made a fair living, nothing more, out of the farm. Sometimes there is drought, you know, or there is failure of crops for some other reason, or the crop is too large and then prices go down, and transportation takes most of the profits in any case. And because of all these things the Hadleys had been in California over six years before they felt free to take a little visiting-trip among their friends who lived in the State.
They had to plan most carefully then to keep within the limits of their very modest income, for already there loomed on the horizon of the future the expenses of the coming season. But they went and had a good time, being heartily welcomed everywhere, and nowhere more heartily than at the Harrises’, the last place on their list. The Harrises had been old neighbors at the Port, being in fact none other than the family who numbered among its members the Clarence to whom the Island Hawks felt that they owed so much.
Clarence was not a boy now; he was a man grown, but he still lived at home and helped his father run a fruit ranch of about four times the size of that of the Hadleys. A man grown he was, but in many respects the same boy, as was proved by the way his widowed sister’s children trailed at his heels all day.
The Hadleys arrived in the evening, and it was not till the next day at noon that the conversation turned upon their loss at the Port. The Harrises had heard about the happening at the time, for Mrs. Harris corresponded with Bobbie’s mother, and they had received, too, several newspapers containing reports of the occurrence, these having been marked and sent out by Mr. Cunningham to various persons to whom he knew the event would be of interest. But there were, of course, details that they had never heard, and it was only natural that they should ask for the story and that Mr. Hadley should tell it over as they sat about the table after the main part of the meal had been eaten.
Clarence was sitting between his lively little niece and nephew, cracking walnuts for them, picking the meats out into their eager little hands, and making little boats and turtles of the shells. The little boy had slipped down and brought him the mucilage-bottle, a piece of stiff paper, and his grandmother’s best shears, purloined from her basket with many sideways glances.
Mr. Hadley told the tale quietly. They were undemonstrative people, and after these years they could talk of this quite without emotion. He told it all,—all the little incidents,—how Esther had been sent for the forgotten bathing-suits the evening before; how Marian had started out without sufficient wraps and Bobbie’s mother had made her take her big cape; of the question Mr. Faston put to them as they were going down to the pier and Delbert’s answer. Of the long search and nothing to pay for it save the little handkerchief beaten into the sand. The others asked a question now and then during the recital, but Clarence sat silent, letting no word of the story escape him, but making no comments as he worked quietly on the little shell boats.
When Mr. Hadley finished, he laid his shipbuilding tools down by his shell-littered plate, and, looking into the white-haired father’s eyes, spoke.
“Mr. Hadley,” he said, “Smugglers’ Island was not within fifty miles of the Rosalie Group.”