Aunt Betty drew a hard breath, and paled a little.
"That can't be for years and years," she said decidedly.
"He said when I'm big, so I want to grow big in a hurry," went on Jack, all unconscious how his frank outspokenness cut his aunt like a knife. Then he turned and saw tears in her pretty eyes, and flew to kiss them away.
"But why are you crying, Aunt Betty? I've not been a naughty boy," he said, reminiscent that on the occasion of his one and only lie, the enormity of his sin had been brought home to him by the fact that Aunt Betty had cried.
She stooped and kissed him now with a little smile.
"I shan't like the day when you go away with father."
"But o' course you'll come along with us," he said, as a kind of happy afterthought, and there they both left it.
And now Aunt Betty's clear voice came calling down the paddock.
"Jack, Jack, it's time you came in to get tidy for tea," but Jack's head was bent a little forward, his eyes were intently fixed upon a man's figure that came walking swiftly and strongly up the green lane from the township, and with a shrill whoop of triumph he sprang from his perch, and went bounding towards the newcomer.
"Aunt Betty, Aunt Betty," he flung back over his shoulder, "it's father, father come to see me," and the next minute he was folded close to the captain's breast, and lifted on to his shoulder, a little boy all grubby with his play, but as happy and joyful as any child in the island.