The day after Frances’ adventure on the hilltop found both Jane and Frances stiff in their shoulder muscles. Aside from that, there were no ill effects from their long and heavy lift. The man they had rescued was more than hospitably received by Mr. Wing and had been urged to make the boat his home until he was able to go down the sea ladder unassisted. Breck had set his leg with sure skill and the patient had eaten a hearty breakfast and declared that he was in no pain at all.
After breakfast, the little party had gathered around him to hear his story. Out of consideration of his weariness the night before, they had unanimously refrained from questioning him. However, Frances had kept Jane awake well into the night with surmises of her find’s looks and personality.
“What do you suppose he would look like, Jane, with a clean face and a shave and his hair combed and decent clothes?” she had asked. “He has such a lot of red hair that I bet he is cross as the dickens.”
“Child,” said Jane with the superior wisdom of one who has lived for twenty-one years with a wifeless father and a motherless brother, “all men are cross when they are sick. He is probably quite nice.”
Consequently the strange man’s discoverer was delightfully surprised when she came down from on deck to hear his story and found him nicely shaven, with his red hair, which she immediately decided was auburn, brushed till it shone and his dirty white ducks replaced by a gay bathrobe of Jack’s.
“I would like to make it awfully interesting,” he began with a grin, “I feel that the two girls who carried my hundred and eighty pounds down that hill should have the reward of having saved a movie hero or the lost heir—anyone, in fact, except just plain Tim Reynolds, who is doing nothing more romantic than spending the summer with his family at Nantucket Island. That is I am supposed to be—the fact is I am proud possessor of a thirty-foot sailboat and, as the result of that, I had the misfortune, or the fortune rather,” this with a friendly little nod at Frances, “to sail into Old Harbor and climb up that hill and break my leg.”
“We are glad you did,” announced Mabel genially and then as everybody laughed at her she added, “Of course, I don’t mean I am glad he broke his leg, you all are so silly. Mr. Reynolds, you know I meant that we are glad you are on board the ‘Boojum,’ don’t you?”
Tim Reynolds nodded reassuringly and begged them not to call him “Mister.”
“You must let us take you to Nantucket, Tim,” said Mr. Wing.
“I couldn’t think of it, sir, you have been far too good already.”
“But we are going to Nantucket anyway. All of us want to see ’Sconset,” put in Frances.
“There is nothing I would like better, if you are really going there and I won’t be too much of a care. And, now that I have accepted, don’t you suppose it would be a good idea to get a message to my fond parents to the effect that their son is still inhaling and exhaling at regular intervals?”
Ellen said in her quiet way, “I have just been looking at the chart and Vinal Haven is only a short distance from here. Why can’t Mabel and Charlie and Jack and I take the tender and go to Vinal Haven and send a telegram to the fond parents? I know that they have laid a cable to Nantucket from Martha’s Vineyard. We could be back in time for lunch.”
“Isn’t that a good idea?” asked Jack proudly.
“It is if you four can remember what you are going for,” teased his sister. “Mr. Wing, will it leave you too stranded if I get Breck to row me over to Hurricane Island in the dinghy? I am wild to know why there are so many deserted houses there. So far, I haven’t seen a sign of life.”
“Would you mind very much rowing round the island I stumbled over and see if my boat is still there? I put over the two anchors; she ought to hold,” Tim said to Breck.
“And what are you going to do about getting her home?” Frances asked Tim, coming over to sit on the companion steps as the others went above.
“We’ve decided enough for one day. Let’s worry about that tomorrow. Why don’t you tell me how you and Jane happen to be such quick thinkers and how you happened to have enough grit to get me down that long hill?”
There was a great noise and bustle on deck, as was always the case when Mabel was about to do anything. Soon the sound of the tender’s motor was heard and its wash licked against the “Boojum’s” sleek black sides. Jane peered down the hatch with intent to ask Frances to come along with Breck and herself, but on seeing the pleasant conversation that was beginning, she decided not to interrupt it.
“Let’s go over to Hurricane Island first and come back by the island of adventure to see if Tim Reynolds’ boat is there,” suggested Breck, as he pulled the dinghy along with sure strokes.
Watching him, Jane thought how very well he did whatever he set his hand to do. This was their first moment alone since the startling disclosure Breck had made about himself the day before. Not that it had come as a very great surprise to Jane, because she had always felt that he was some one other than a deck hand and she might have known that he would have been among the first to offer himself to serve humanity.
As he rowed, he watched her and, seeing her thoughtful expression, suddenly asked her, “Jane, what are you wondering about?”
“About Breck,” she said frankly.
“What do you want to know about him?” he asked, smiling at her utter frankness.
“Whatever he wants to tell me.”
“That is a large order, because do you know, Jane, I want to tell you everything good or bad that has ever happened to me. I’ve wanted to tell you several things for some time, but I felt that I had no right to burden you with my affairs.”
“Breck, you know I’ve wanted to know about you but felt that I had no right to pry into those same affairs. Do you remember that night at Gloucester, when you got those two telegrams? I saw you frown at one and grin at the other. It was all I could do to keep from asking what had happened, ’specially about the one you didn’t seem to like,” she confessed.
“The one I liked was from a friend of mine in New York. I left a lot of stories with him and asked him to get the stuff decently copied and send some of them around to different magazines for me. The telegram told me that the Saturday Evening Post had accepted a story and wanted to see more. That tickled me mightily, because it is the first luck I have had with a big magazine. The other was from my sister, assuring me that my father was as mad at me as ever.”
“I wondered why you didn’t write, Breck, you are always so keenly interested in people’s actions and reactions. I am awfully glad the Post took the story. Will you tell me why your father is mad at you, too?”
“To begin with, we have always disagreed from the time he sent me to a norfolk-jacket-and-buster-brown-collar-country-school-for-rich-little-boys and I wanted to wear a jersey and go to a public school in town. Not that I didn’t love the country, because the part of my life I remember with most pleasure is the summers I spent on my uncle’s ranch in the west.” Breck’s sunburned face took on the sad look that was so distressing to Jane. He continued, “A surprising thing happened. Both of us agreed on my going to Harvard and finally on my going into medicine. Everything was all right for two years and a half, when, at Christmas vacation, I decided to spend my holidays with some friends in New York instead of taking the trip across the continent to spend the time with my family in California.”
“But surely, just the failure to be with him at Christmas was not enough to cause a real breach,” Jane broke in.
“No, but what happened next was,” Breck went on. “My two friends and I had ridiculously large allowances. One night, we thought it would be fun to go slumming and see how the other half lived. For their sakes, I hope they have forgotten. For my part, I don’t believe I ever shall. The wretchedness, the sick misery of those people! At any rate, after my trip, I became fired with a great desire to do something for those people and wrote home to Father that I intended to hang out my shingle in the east side and, of course, practice for nothing. It never entered my head that Father wouldn’t abet me in such a work. He is very, very rich indeed and I thought that he would not only continue my allowance but probably give me large donations from time to time so that I might be able even to have an infirmary in connection with my office. My dream was short lived. When I got back to college, I found a curt note saying that my plan was ridiculous and that my allowance would be stopped immediately and that he would decline to foot the bill for my tuition with any such career in view. I wrote him in reply that I intended to do as I had written him before. He made good his threat and I stayed on at college for a few months, doing that supposedly romantic thing, ‘working my way through’ mostly by selling short things to small magazines. It is something that no one should be allowed to do too, let me tell you. Why there aren’t more cases of brain fag among the students that attempt it, I don’t see. Then things got so rotten on the other side that I couldn’t stand not being in it. So at last I got over with a bunch of my older friends with a French ambulance unit.”
Dismissing the part he played in the war as rapidly as possible, he hurried on to tell of what took place at his return.
“When you came back from overseas, didn’t his attitude change toward you a bit?” Jane asked anxiously.
“Oh, of course, I suppose he was proud of me in a way. They gave a huge ball and my sister made me meet all her blasé friends. After being so close to the realities, all their little affectations and vanities grated on me terribly. At any rate, after a very melodramatic scene in which my father offered to forget my silliness at Harvard and take me in as a junior partner in his tremendous exporting business, I saw that it wasn’t any use arguing, so I just told them good-bye and came to New York and got a job as reporter for one of the papers. Don’t let me bore you to death, will you, Jane? Everybody likes to talk about himself, I suppose, and it means an awful lot to me to be able to talk to somebody. I am not whining around for sympathy, you know that, don’t you?” he said quickly. “And I don’t mean to run down my family, they are all right in their way. We just don’t hit it off.”
“I know,” Jane said, “some people seem to get born in the wrong families and some families just seem to have the wrong children. But how did you happen to come on the ‘Boojum’?”
“I thought that, if I got outdoors, I would be able to write better stuff. You see, after I had been writing regular newspaper things all day, I needed to get out and do something else at night besides sitting in my room and writing at stories. Out on the coast at home, I had always had a boat of some sort or other and I was crazy about the water. So I thought that I could make enough money to see me through the summer, get a chance to do some writing and put in an enjoyable healthy summer if I signed on as deck hand on some yacht. ‘Boojum’ happened to be the one. So far, it is the best thing that has happened to me.”
“Wasn’t it awful hard pretending that you were just a plain deck hand? When we talked about things you knew about, didn’t you want to butt in?”
“It was harder than I dreamed it would be. I thought that you girls would be like my sister’s friends and, knowing how rich Mr. Wing was, I thought that he would run his yacht just as most of the sound yachtsmen do, as though it was some fragile little boat that couldn’t stand an all day sail, or rather that he couldn’t. When I found out what a peach of a bunch you all were and I realized what my position was, I admit I used to get pretty gloomy.”
“What a shame, Breck, when all of us wanted to be nice to you, but were afraid to be because we couldn’t bear to have you think we were the patronizing sort.”
“It wasn’t really bad,” Breck hastened to assure seeing the distressed look she gave him. “You see, when you girls began to get so keen about sailing the ship, it left me very little work to do on deck, so I had lots of time to put in on my writing.”
“Is it hard living in such close quarters in the galley with that funny little Dutch steward?”
“It is rather interesting. He has been everywhere and has splendid tales to tell. Do you remember at Plymouth when you said that you would like to arrange the orchestration of his snores? That is the only real objection I have to him. He is the best-hearted little fellow in the world, so I suppose we ought to be ready to forgive him his only vice.”
“He is a marvelous cook, don’t you think? But look here, Breck, you are just rowing anywhere, we’ll never get to the island unless we stop talking,” said Jane coming to the realization that for about half an hour they had been aimlessly drifting along, Breck occasionally dipping the copper tipped oars in the water from habit.
As they drew nearer the island they saw that a huge crane hung out over the water and that there was the remains of quite a large dock. Several dories and a small catboat were moored in the little harbor. A great many lobster pots were slung up on the rocks that shelved above the beach.
“It can’t be entirely deserted or I don’t suppose they would have left these perfectly good boats. And where there are lobsters there must be some lobsterers,” said Jane, a little disappointed that it wasn’t really a deserted island.
“Let’s carry it a little farther and hope that if the presence of the lobster pots can prove that there are lobsterers, then the presence of the lobsterers might prove some lobsters,” said Breck, remembering that Mabel had asked him to try and see if he couldn’t find some for her.
The water near shore was so clear that they could see the pebbles gleaming at least ten feet below the surface.
“I wish we had one of those glass bottom boats that the natives row the tourists around in at some of the South Sea Islands,” Breck said.
“There still doesn’t seem to be any sign of natives on this island to row us around in even an oak bottomed boat. Shall we just snoop about and hunt for some one or shall we stand here and yell till some one materializes?” Jane asked as she stepped out on the beach.
At the sound of her voice, there was a slight movement on one of the big slabs of granite and a boy of about sixteen, dressed in a gray flannel shirt and faded dungarees, stood up.
Jane went over to him, smiling in her friendly way. The boy slipped down from his rock with the grace of a wild animal. Jane thought that she had never seen a more beautiful and charming looking boy. Very tall and with a small well-set head, he had the unmistakable look of race.
“I am Jane Pellew and this is Allen Breckenbridge,” said Jane with a strange little thrill as she realized that she had used Breck’s full name in the introduction.
She stretched out her hand and it was taken with the greatest poise and courteousness. “I am Frederick Gray,” he said, dropping her hand and giving Breck a cordial little nod.
His voice had the peculiar quality of keeping the same tone, never rising or falling at the end of a sentence, and there seemed to be a definite spacing between each word. It did not, however, produce the monotonous, sing-song effect that Jane had so often noticed in the New Englanders’ voices. The boy’s voice was full and rich and soothing.
“I didn’t see you until you stood up,” Jane told him.
“No wonder, my clothes are just the color of the rocks. I sometimes feel that I am really part of this island, do you know,” Frederick Gray said with a trace of wistfulness. “We watched your yacht come in the other night. I was afraid you would go away without my seeing any of you.”
Jane wondered who “we” were. She had an odd feeling that the boy was the only person who stayed on the island, for as he had said, he did seem such a part of it.
Her wonder was short lived, for as she and Breck and the boy went up a narrow rocky path, approaching the first of the group of houses, two tow-headed little boys emerged from the bushes and ran scuttling into the open door of the house.
Breck called after them reassuringly, “Hey, Buddies! Come back, we won’t hurt you!”
Frederick Gray smiled and told them that they were his youngest brothers and that they were afraid because they weren’t used to seeing anybody but his mother and father and his oldest sister.
“She is away at school now, so they will probably be afraid of her when she comes back.”
“What in the world is she doing away at school this time of the year?” said Jane, in surprise.
“I meant college; she is at Columbia in the summer school,” the boy explained, adding rather proudly, “I am going to New York and live with her this winter, because Daddy wants me to go to Horace Mann before I go to Yale.”
“You are sure you have got time to show your island and sure you don’t mind it,” Breck asked, feeling that if he were the owner of such a near future he would no doubt be very busy.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see people. I’m always so glad when people come on the island. It is really a pleasure to show them around. You know, of course, that this was once a quarry, and at one time several hundred workmen lived here.”
“We didn’t know it, but we certainly should have if we had given any notice to that huge crane and all those slabs of granite heaped up on the beach. The workmen, of course, lived in those cottages?” asked Breck interestedly.
“I wish Daddy would come out and tell you about it, because he knows so much more about it than I do, though I was a little boy when we first came here. There is an awful lot of machinery connected with the quarry; I never have been interested in it, and so don’t know very much about it. Daddy knows all about every kind of machine. But I can’t disturb him now because he is working on his plans for some sort of submarine detector,” the boy told them as he led them past his vine-covered home towards a frame building about a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide.
“How did you happen to come here to live? You don’t mind me calling you Fred, do you?” Jane asked as they entered the strangely shaped building.
“My uncle had the contract to build a sea wall and he knew that granite was on this island. He found that it would be cheaper to start a quarry here and carry it over to where they were building the sea wall than it would be to have to transport it from some other point much farther away. After the sea wall was finished and there wasn’t any more use for operating the quarry, my uncle took his workmen and they went back to their regular working place. Then, you see, my uncle didn’t like to leave all these houses and machinery without some one as a sort of overseer, and as Daddy likes to be quiet so he can work on his inventions, they got together and made arrangements for us to come out here.”
“Don’t you ever get bored or lonesome,” Breck asked the boy.
“It was more fun before my sister went away, of course, but there really is plenty to do. I made enough money off lobsters last year to buy that boat you passed on the way in and then, of course, there are an awful lot of books Daddy brought with us.”
“Breck,” said Jane, wrinkling her forehead, “why couldn’t Fred sail Tim Reynolds’ boat back to Nantucket?”
Breck looked at the boy and shook his head. “Too much for him to handle by himself.”
But the boy’s face lit up at Jane’s words. “What size is she?”
“Thirty feet, Tim said, didn’t he, Jane?”
“I could trim the jib aft and handle her all right,” the boy said with such confidence that Breck would have believed him if he had said he intended to give Thomas Lipton and his “Shamrock IV” time and come in ahead of him.
“Don’t you suppose you could get some other boy to go along with you, so it wouldn’t work you so hard?” Jane said, rather amused by Breck’s rapid change of expression.
“Virg Bradford over on the mainland might go. I’ll row over and see and let you know tonight.” The boy was delighted at the prospect of a real sail.
“Then suppose you just come in time for supper and we can talk it over with Mr. Wing and Tim and see what they say,” said Breck, not considering it worth while to mention consulting Fred’s father, as it was evident from the boy’s account of the inventor and from his own quick way of deciding things, that he was the man of the family.
Fred walked them the length of the building, telling them that it was the polishing room.
“You look mighty thinky,” Breck said to Jane, noticing that she had wrinkled up her forehead again.
“I believe it is a real thought, too, this time. I was just thinking that this long building might have been some ancient dining hall. You know the kind where ‘the eagles scream in the roof trees.’ With all these cottages and this for a sort of mess room, I don’t see why some one couldn’t make a lot of money running this place as a sort of summer colony. It has a marvelous outlook, wonderful boating, and the swimming would be all right I suppose if you could ever get used to such freezing water. How about it, Fred?” she asked, turning to the boy.
“I go in every day and so do Mother and the kids. Dad too, if he thinks about it,” Fred answered. “I used to think that it was an awful pity for those houses to be empty in the summer and sometimes I tried to get Dad to talk about it, but he always said that it wasn’t any use, because we had enough money and he couldn’t be quiet if there were a lot of summer people always about.”
“Do you suppose there would be any trouble about renting the island from your uncle?” Breck asked the boy. He had been looking around at the attractive cottages with growing interest and a decidedly ruminating eye, since Jane had suggested the possibility of a flourishing summer colony. Gradually the thought was taking place in his mind that it would be an unusual and remunerative way of spending the following spring and summer. The thought of himself as a rising young business man was amusing to him as he remembered his position as a deck hand on Mr. Wing’s yacht. Then he came to the realisation that such a project would take some capital and he said a smothered “Damn!”
But Jane heard it. “What? Breck, things in general or some person or thing in particular?”
“Me first and next my luck, then things.” Then he told her what he had been thinking, adding that it would give him endless opportunity for copy and also unlimited time to write but, of course, it was a foolish impossibility.
“Breck, you are terribly ignorant about business and I don’t suppose I am much better, but I seem to know that there are such things as companies and, as long as I thought of it, I think I at least ought to have a chance to buy some stock. Besides let’s tell Mr. Wing about it, and when I get home I will talk it over with Daddy. It would be an awful lot of fun even if we didn’t make much off of it the first year. I know lots of people at home that are always trying to find some new place to spend the summer. Dad and I were wondering what I was going to do with myself just before I left this summer. I don’t appear to have been born with any special talents and I couldn’t bear the idea of making my debut. Of course, I couldn’t take the housekeeping over from Aunt Min, because that’s all she has in her life.”
“Weren’t born with any special talent! Why, Jane, you were born with the greatest talent in the world, that of making everybody with whom you come in contact love you. And you just wait till I can offer you a house to keep,” Breck said, entirely forgetting Fred.
“Wouldn’t these houses be enough to start on?” asked Jane. “I’m young yet and not much of a housekeeper.” Jane was blushing and her eyes had a very happy light in them.
“Oh, Jane! What do you mean?” cried Breck, catching the girl’s hands and drawing her towards him.
“I simply mean that you needn’t wait until you can get any more houses before—before—you—before—”
“Before what?”
“Before you ask me to keep one for you. Now aren’t we modern, though? I reckon I’ve done the proposing, but I’m not the least embarrassed over it. Of course, if you had refused me, I might have felt a bit shy.”
Jane’s voice was muffled by reason of the fact that Breck was allowing very little room for speech and her sentences had more punctuations than a mere writer can put in print.
“Refuse you! Oh, Jane, what a darling you are! I can’t believe this thing has really happened to me, when I think how miserable I have been during the last months.”
“Well if you doubt it you can question the witnesses,” laughed Jane.
“Oh, that boy Fred!” exclaimed Breck. “I forgot him.”
But Frederick Gray had beaten a hasty retreat when he saw how matters were going between his new-found friends and had disappeared around a boulder, but his little tow-headed brothers were not so nice in their behavior. Silently they had entered on the love scene and had stood hand in hand viewing with wonder and astonishment the surprising carryings on of the Hurricane Island interlopers.
“Ith that girl your thweetheart?” lisped the younger one.
“Yeth, and the thweeteth thweetheart ever,” declared Breck. “Come back!” he called to Frederick, whose figure he could see in the distance. “The worst is over, old man. That is, over until next time. You are going to be a member of this firm, Fred, so you must come and let us talk it over with you.”
“All right, sir,” said Fred, whose ears were crimson from embarrassment. He looked at Breck with even more admiration than before. Any man who could win such a girl as Miss Jane Pellew was surely a hero in the eyes of the island boy. Fred was almost sorry he could not help being such a gentleman. When he saw how the wind lay, he felt it incumbent upon him to turn his back and walk off but he had a pardonable curiosity about how a man went to work to make love to a girl like Jane.
Hand in hand, Jane and Breck made their way to the beach. It seemed to the pair of lovers that the already perfect day was even more perfect than it had been before. The sky was bluer, the sea more sparkling. The “Boojum,” riding at anchor in the bay, looked like a fairy ship, while the gulls that circled around her seemed whiter and more graceful than ever gulls had been before.
“Oh, Breck, isn’t life beautiful?” said Jane, but in the corner of her eye was a tiny unshed tear. “It is so beautiful I wish everybody knew how beautiful it is, all the poor little sick children and tired mothers.”
“Why, honey, I was just thinking the same thing. I don’t know why being happier than I’ve ever been in my life should make me think of the suffering children on the East Side, but it has somehow. Those gulls shouldn’t make me think of little half-starved children over on Avenue A. Heaven knows there is nothing white about them, except their little pinched faces, but they do all the same.”
“I know why you are thinking of them!” exclaimed Jane. “It is because this place would be such a corking one to bring the kids to. Let’s have our scheme be not just a money making one but one to help somebody besides ourselves. Oh Breck, let’s try to have some of those little creatures here with us every summer.”
“Jane, Jane, what a girl you are!” and Breck wished there weren’t so many little tow-headed boys on the island, for he felt he’d like to try to make Jane understand a little better how much he adored her but the little Grays were trotting along by their side totally unconscious of how out of place they were.
Frances, led on by Tim’s interested questions, had been giving that wounded young man a glowing account of the Camp Fire movement in general and of their own group in particular. She had told him of the splendid effect it had on the spirit of the girls at Hillside, of the wonders it had worked on the characters of Blanche Shirley and Emmeline Cerrito.
“And you have no idea how much fun we have had together. Even work is fun when we all work together. Last year, we were all down on Jane’s big farm in Kentucky when the harvest had just begun. It happened that there was an excursion for the negroes scheduled for the same day and all the hands, house servants, yard boys, stable boys, even down to the smallest pickaninnies on the place, just took temporary French leave. Mr. Pellew was terribly upset. You see, he had engaged the machines and everything. Anyway, Ellen and Mabel got busy in the kitchen and cooked for simply rafts of people, the rest of us went out in the fields with Jack and Mr. Pellew and he said that we worked just as well as the men and that we were lots more conscientious.” Frances said this with a rather defiant air, because she had often found that the young men of her acquaintance were inclined to doubt female prowess in any line other than fancy sewing.
“You sound like a dandy bunch of girls. No one could realize that fact more keenly than I. But don’t you think it is rather unusual for girls to be as capable as that? And don’t you suppose the novelty of the affair had a great deal to do with the girl’s conscientiousness?” Seeing Frances’ indignant expression, Tim hastened to add, “I am not stating this as facts. Like Will Irwin’s Japanese school boy, ‘I ask to know’.”
“All right, then,” said Frances, relenting at his meek tones, “if you come to the discussion with an humble open mind, I’ll continue to be pro, and after I have finished I’ll listen to your con.”
“Like a lamb to the slaughter,” announced Tim, folding his brown arms over his chest. “I’m ready. The battle may begin.”
“Heavens! you have me all confused now. How am I to know whether you are going to listen like a meek lamb or whether you have entered the ranks, arrayed in glittering armor, ready to fight to the death. Don’t be so contradictory in your statements.”
“I crave your indulgence for my mixed metaphors. In the crude parlance of these modern times, ‘shoot’,” said Tim.
“Resolved: that the female of the species can do as much work as the male and do it in almost as many branches as the aforesaid male. Two cousins of mine were with the Vassar College farm unit for twelve weeks, summer before last, and at the end of the twelve weeks, the head of the farmerettes mailed out questionnaires to the different men who had employed the girls as farm hands during the summer. These questionnaires asked the farmers if the girls were equal to the men as to strength, interest, conscientiousness and so on. All of the farmers answered that they were perfectly able to do all the work that had been set them to do, and that they had been given the work of the men that were overseas, and that they had accomplished it well; and, further, that they showed a quickness in learning that the men did not, and that they were more interested in their work, and far more conscientious than the men they had formerly employed. When asked if they would consider employing the Vassar girls at another time, all the men who had employed the girls said that most assuredly they would,” and Frances stopped rather out of breath but smiling triumphantly at her adversary. “We will now hear the other side.”
“Madame, I have the honor to announce that your worthy opponent is absolutely convinced and begs your forgiveness for his former unbelief. There will be no rebuttal, ladies and gentlemen,” said Tim with a grin at a make-believe audience.
He looked at Frances in open admiration, for the vivid pink that the excitement of a chance argument always brought had flushed her cheeks and her gray eyes sparkled with amusement at his defeat.
Just then there was a thud on deck and Mabel’s cheery voice called to find out how the patient was getting along. After making the tender fast to the boat boom, Jack and Ellen and Mabel and Charlie, followed by Mr. Wing, came down into the little saloon to tell Tim that the telegram assuring his family of his safety had been duly sent.
“The girls insisted on our bringing you candy and magazines, but I have a hunch that it wasn’t you alone they had in view,” said Jack, unloading himself of many bundles.
“But I knew you would want something to smoke, so I brought along a couple of cartons of Piedmonts. I hope that it is what you use,” said Charlie with the complacency of one who has done well.
“Speaking of unselfish devotion,” Ellen spoke up in defense of herself and Mabel, “who likes Piedmonts more than our own dear Charlie?”
Frances jumped up, grabbed Ellen’s arm and lifted it high over her head and in her best referee manner began, “One, two, three, four, five—”
Tim raised a protesting hand, “I’ll report the match to the authorities, as not one word was said about the ‘gentlemen being members of this club.’”
“What in the world is society coming to, when its younger members of both sexes are so familiar with the expressions of the boxing ring?” Mr. Wing asked.
“Oh, Daddy, Daddy! As if you don’t go to every fight that comes off, not to speak of the wrestling matches! Who was it I heard saying to Breck not long ago that he would ‘lay five to one’ on Dempsey in the Willard-Dempsey fight?” and, withering before Mabel’s onslaught, Mr. Wing retreated up the companion.
“Listen to this,” said Jack, who had been running through the magazines while the bout was going on, “It’s called ‘Sails’:
“That’s rather nice,” Tim said as Jack finished the little verse, “and it’s just the way I feel. Wouldn’t it have been fine if there wasn’t any machinery and we could all have gone on living in the woods, in leopard skins—I rather fancy myself in a leopard skin—”
“You are just the person to make the most fuss if your train happens to be the least bit late,” Frances broke in on him.
“And sail around all summer in a fast little yacht,” Tim went on, with a grin at Frances.
“Then about the first of October eat enough to last you until spring and crawl into your little cave and sleep till warm weather.”
“What a pretty picture,” laughed Mabel. “Glimpse Tim, draped in leopard’s skin, nimbly going up the shrouds, with a telescope, development of the modern time, to sit in the crosstree and watch the races in the sound.”
“People always imagine that whatever time they live in is the very worst time, and, as for clothes, what could be more uncomfortable than a leopard’s skin. It would always be getting in the soup or something,” objected Jack.
“You would hardly have to worry about soup in connection with a leopard’s skin. What you would probably do would be skip along the shore and hunt for mussels or hide behind the bushes and jump out on a frightened little pig and sit down on your haunches and devour him raw,” decided Frances.
“Consider the bristles,” shuddered Ellen.
“Dinghy abaft our stern, sirs,” announced Mr. Wing to the little group in the saloon.
The dinghy slipped up to the “Boojum” and Jane went down to join her friends in the saloon. Breck, after making fast the dinghy, went forward to the galley. It had been decided between them that it would be better not to say anything about their plans until after Frederick Gray made his appearance and the subject of Tim’s boat had been settled, then Jane had planned to talk to Mr. Wing about the feasibility of turning Hurricane Island into a summer resort. As to their proposed partnership, that could wait. In the meantime it was nobody’s business but theirs.
“How ’bout my little boat?” Tim demanded with such a motherly expression that they all laughed.
“Right as rain,” Jane assured him. “And, Oh! Tim, she is a darling, isn’t she? Breck and I snugged ship for you and we have got a boy coming over tonight to see you about taking her back to Nantucket for you. ‘Sabrina’ is a lovely name for her too.”
“What sort of boy, Plain Jane?” inquired Mr. Wing.
“A perfect peach of a boy. Breck and I went bats about him. In the first place, he is a dream to look at—”
“Something more substantial than a dream is going to take my ‘Sabrina’ home,” said Tim.
“Beautiful people have sense sometimes, Tim. Anyhow, he is coming over tonight and you can see for yourself. He is plenty big and strong enough to handle her if he is able to get a friend of his to go along with him. He is awfully interesting and well read and made me feel awfully ashamed because he didn’t use one drop of slang the entire time we talked to him, and it must have been at least three hours. His father is an inventor. His name is Frederick Gray and I asked him to come to supper. You don’t mind, do you, Skipper?” Jane appealed to Mr. Wing.
“What about the island—you haven’t said a word about it?” asked Jack.
“Heavens, don’t get me started on the island. I don’t ever want to stop talking about it. We, I mean I’ve got the most wonderful plan, but I am not going to talk about it till Fred comes over tonight,” Jane put them off.
“What about my lobsters?” demanded Mabel.
“We brought you back a whole dinghy full of them. The steward is getting them out now. Fred gave them to us.”
“I have changed my mind about Fred, then,” said Tim. “I am that fond of lobsters.”
“Anybody in his right mind would have to like Fred. But wait till you see him. In the meantime, how long before lunch? I am simply starved!” and Jane pounced on the candy.
After lunch, Jane, pleading sleepiness, crawled into the port bunk in the saloon and drew the tan curtains. People are apt to respect a feigned desire for sleep far more than a genuine desire for thoughtful solitude and she wanted to think over the events of the morning.
She believed that she owed it to Jack to tell him of her engagement to Breck and yet she felt a strange hesitancy, for as much as she adored her brother, she knew that he would neither understand nor approve of her marrying the quixotic deck hand. The fact that he was a Breckenridge would not alter the case in the least for her brother. Jack was one of those steady, easy-going young men with a kind but peculiarly unsocial outlook. Jane knew that he would have a slight feeling of contempt for a man who had offered himself in marriage to a girl whom he could neither support in the fabled “manner she was accustomed to” nor yet offer a stable income to her.
He would look on the Hurricane Island project as the wildest of wild ideas. The nomadic life she would probably share with Breck would have no appeal to the ease-loving young Kentuckian. His dream of perfect happiness was their lovely old home with Ellen as its mistress and long evenings spent together by the open fire. Jane realized that her brother was a typical “country gentleman” of the last century with a few modern touches in the way of slang. Nor did the differences in their character make her devotion to him any less, but it did make her rather dread the interview she had planned to have with him just before it was time for Frederick Gray to make his appearance. Of her father’s attitude in the matter, she had no fear. He was of the opinion that whatever his children did was right. Aunt Min was radically opposed to any new idea, but when the novelty of a situation had worn off she softened.
“It may be up-hill work but Breck and I are strong enough to see it through,” Jane decided. “The worst part will be talking to Jack. I will never convince him of the fact that I had even more to do with it than Breck did.”
“Jane has been asleep long enough. I’m going down and make her go swimming in this icy water with me.”
Frances left the others on deck and went down into the saloon. She jerked back the curtains to find Jane with her knees drawn up under her chin, her hands clasped around her ankles.
“What a graceful position to sleep in, Jane. I do hope you had a good nap.”
“As long as I am caught, I will admit that I withdrew into this shell to solve the problems of the universe, which being successfully solved, I want very much to go swimming,” Jane said, undoubling and emerging from her retreat.
Frances looked at her friend rather quizzically. “But it’s so unlike our Plain Jane to have problems. Is there anything that I can do? I mean in the way of solving? I’m rather eager to try that new position in thinking.”
“It was a very trying experience for me—that thinking—but, having come to the world-shaking conclusion that the only thing to do in a case like this is to do what you think is right, especially when what you think is right is what you want to do, I am not going to worry any more,” said Jane, catching the bathing suit Frances flung at her.
“What a wise but completely unintelligible Jane it is! But I suppose I must just abide my time and, finally, the secret will be revealed to your humble and admiring slave. Ah, well, I can wait if I have to. But let me say that I have suspected it ever since the night you asked me if I knew whether Breck had his slicker on or not,” said Frances solemnly.
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember that night at Plymouth, when you went up in the graveyard by yourself, and when you came back I said you looked like you had had one million adventures? Well, when we returned to the boat it started raining, don’t you remember? And Mr. Wing and Breck went up on deck to see something about that interminable old anchor. I was just about asleep and you woke me up asking me if I knew whether Breck had a raincoat or not. ‘There is something strange about this,’ sez I to meself, sez I, and I have been a quiet but interested observer ever since.”
“You are a darling, Frances, and the world lost a great detective when we Camp Fire Girls made such a good friend,” and Jane gave her hand an affectionate little pat.
“Tell me all about it when you feel like it,” and, with Jane’s promise to do so soon, they went up on deck.
“You lazy ones put on your bathing suits and let’s take the tender and go over and see Tim’s boat. We can swim from the beach. I feel like the water won’t be so cold where it’s shallower,” Frances suggested.
The others, having heard Jane’s glowing account of the “Sabrina,” readily agreed. Soon they were off, leaving Breck, Mr. Wing and Tim to make Frederick Gray feel at home if he should come before the others got back, though, as Jane said, Fred had enough poise to carry off almost any situation.
There was a stretch of sandy beach, flanked by gray boulders, near the “Sabrina’s” anchorage, and after inspecting Tim’s beautiful little boat they all went ashore.
Jane whispered to Jack that she wanted to talk to him for a few minutes and they went over to one of the sunbaked rocks, while the rest of the crowd stood ankle deep in the cold water, trying to force themselves into it.
“I’ll never get into it by degrees,” Frances shivered, as she took three or four tentative steps. “Come on, Mabel, I believe the water around that farthest rock will be deep enough to make a shallow drive.”
Jack looked at Jane with surprise. “What is it?” he asked.
“What do you think of Breck?”
“All this mystery to know what I think of Breck?” Jack was amused. “Why, I suppose he is all right. Never paid much attention to him. Seems a bit sullen to me. I don’t reckon I’ve said two words to him since I have been on board.” Jack’s eyes followed Ellen’s little figure as it ran bravely out into the chilly water, hesitated a second, made a rather poor surface dive and began swimming shoreward with very irregular and splashy strokes.
“It is funny Ellen can’t learn to swim,” Jane said as she, too, watched her friend’s efforts.
“I think she does remarkably well,” Jack said quickly. “But what made you ask me what I thought of Breck?”
“I simply wanted to know your opinion of your prospective brother-in-law.”
For a minute Jack looked at her blankly, then laughed as if what his sister said was a huge joke.
“I am serious, Jack dear, I intend to marry Breck when we get back to New York and will write Daddy to that effect tonight,” Jane spoke calmly but with convincing assurance.
“It is preposterous,” Jack said hotly. “It is ridiculous to discuss it. Of course, Daddy will forbid it. If you insist, he won’t give you any money and, of course, you could hardly live on a deck hand’s salary. Besides, what would a deck hand do for a living in the winter?”
Jane smiled a little at Jack’s ideas about money. “Daddy won’t say a word in the first place, and you seem to have forgotten that the money mother left me would allow me to live very comfortably in the second place, and Breck isn’t a deck hand in the third place. Didn’t you hear what he said when he set Tim’s leg?”
“No, I was out in the tender, but anybody that has knocked around can set a leg.”
“What are your objections to him besides his lack of money?” Jane said a little contemptuously.
“A Pellew would hardly marry—”
“Oh, Jack dear, don’t say it, please,” Jane interrupted him, “it would sound so stupid and snobbish. It is only fair to tell you that his full name is Allen Breckenridge, you know the ones that live in California, and he went to Harvard and studied medicine. Then he had a fuss with his father and broke with him. He went with a French ambulance unit in the war. When he came back, he went on a newspaper and, this summer, he signed up with Mr. Wing because he wanted time to write and yet he needed money to live on while doing so. The ‘Boojum’ solved the problem. Jack, don’t you see what a peach he is?”
Jack admitted that Breck’s being a Breckenridge altered things somewhat. But he remained firm in his belief that the affair was an impossible one.
“But, Jack dear, you mustn’t change your opinion of him just because he is from one of those terrible things known as a ‘good family’—as far as that goes, I think it is a terrible family and they have behaved abominably to him. I want you to like him because he is a fine, interesting man,” Jane pleaded. She was constantly given opportunities to regret that her brother was not as open-minded as she was.
“Jane, please believe that your happiness is my chief concern. What you have told me of him seems to me condemning. I see him as an impulsive, unstable person, inclined to drifting.”
“I know that you think I am an incurable romantic and that I see him in a sort of glamour. I don’t. I have been with him a lot and we have had long talks. I love him terribly, but I realize he has the usual quota of faults. What he needs is a steady hand on the reins and, Jack, you know my hand is fairly reliable. You respect my judgment of horses, why won’t you respect my judgment of husbands? Of course, what you have said, what you will say, can’t affect me in the least, but I do wish you would wish me happiness and say that you will try to like Breck,” finished Jane.
Jack sat silent for a while, his head in his cupped hands, finally he said, “Forgive me. I was a rotter to say what I did about Breck’s being a deck hand. I will like him and try to make him like me. You are a great little sister and Breck is a mighty lucky man.”
A victory so far, thought Jane, and decided to spare Jack the Hurricane Island project till Fred came. “You are rather a darling, Jack,” she said, “and I think Ellen will be a splendid swimmer soon. Run along down to her now and help her with that scissors kick.”
After the swim, Jane had had a long conversation with Mr. Wing, with the result that a place was set for Breck at the table in the saloon. Purple wildflowers, picked on the island and thrust into a low bowl, stood in the center of the table and gave a gala air to the saloon. Ellen had arranged them and said to Mabel that she had not realized how much she missed flowers till she saw these.
Jane and Breck watched for Frederick Gray on deck, both of them feeling shy and self-conscious. Finally, his dory slid up alongside the “Boojum” and the boy, in immaculate white ducks, was soon standing beside his new friends.
“Everybody is down in the saloon. Let’s go down and get the introductions over,” Jane said, leading the way.
Frederick Gray had been looking forward all day to the little supper party. Breck and Jane had delighted him with their warm friendliness in the morning and he was anxious to see if their friends were as charming as they were. It was a rare treat to the boy to mix with his own kind. His father could find little time to spare to his son, so engrossed was he in his inventions, and the younger children, of course, kept his mother very busy. She did all the work, as the isolation of Hurricane Island made the servant question impossible. Since his sister’s departure for Columbia, he had been far lonelier than he cared to admit. In fact, he had not realized how alone he was till he saw this group of natural, kindly people.
“Reading from the left to the right, first row standing are my brother, Jack Pellew, Ellen Birch, and Mr. Wing. Seated, are Frances Bliss, Charlie Preston and Mabel Wing. The gentleman lying down is Tim Reynolds and it is his boat that we want you to take back to Nantucket,” Jane said in oratorical tones, “and all you aforementioned, this is my friend Frederick Gray.”
“Mr. Wing,” Fred said, going forward to shake hands with him, “it is very kind indeed of you to let me be with you tonight. I haven’t seen so many new people at one time for years.”
“It is great for us to have you with us,” Mr. Wing said. “We were beginning to need a little new blood, and your coming and Tim’s coming just started things nicely rolling again.”
Fred could not but feel at home at once with the cordial welcome he had received and he soon found himself seated by Tim talking of the trip he was to make with the “Sabrina.” He told Tim that Virg Bradford had consented to go with him and then he was so eloquent in his praise of the little “Sabrina” that Tim immediately decided his pet would be perfectly safe in such appreciative hands. So the few minutes before supper passed very quickly for Fred and Tim. But they rather dragged for Jane and Breck, for they felt, as Jane put it, “on pins and needles,” till they knew how everybody would take it.
The little Dutch steward came in with delicious pea puree and the little party fell to with a right good will. The lobsters that Breck and Jane brought back from Hurricane Island formed the special dish of the meal and were prepared with an interesting sauce of vinegar and butter that the steward claimed as his own receipt. With the coffee, Jack rose and announced that he had something to say.
“But we don’t want any after-dinner speeches,” objected Mabel, “besides this is a supper and who ever heard of after-supper speeches? Fred is the guest of honor, and he ought to be the one to speak if anybody has to.”
“You have but to hear me and I know you will think I was justified in speaking. I’ll make it short and snappy,” Jack promised Mabel, “for I know you want to talk yourself.”
“Jack, you’re horrid. Shut up and begin,” Mabel commanded.
“Don’t give such confusing orders, daughter,” Mr. Wing said. “Go on, Jack, I am awfully interested and will keep my daughter quiet if I have to gag her.”
“Well, it’s this,” Jack began. “In the first place, I haven’t the faintest idea how a thing like this ought to be done—”
“And we know, of course, that you didn’t expect to be called on at this meeting,” Charlie interrupted him.
“But the fact is,” Jack ignored him, “that I want to announce the engagement of my sister, Jane Pellew, to Allen Breckenridge,” and, quite overcome, Jack sat down.
Everybody was perfectly silent until Frances threw herself into the breach and saved the situation by saying, “Sloan’s liniment—‘Don’t rub, let it penetrate’—Jack, you did it so suddenly you simply took our breaths away. I bid to be first to congratulate both the contracting parties,” and she jumped up and ran around to Jane and hugged her and gave Breck’s hand a cordial squeeze.
Frances’ quickness galvanized the little party into life and all the girls kissed Jane repeatedly and the men wrung Breck’s hand again and again. Then the questions began, “When did it happen?” “Isn’t it awfully sudden?” “Wasn’t Jack funny?” “You didn’t know he was going to do it, did you, Jane dear?”
And Jane was infinitely grateful to Jack for the part he played because he couldn’t have acknowledged Breck in a more sincere and gracious manner.
“Why, Breck,” teased Mr. Wing, “I believe you are quite used to having announcements of this kind made about you. You are behaving like a professional fiancé.”
“I am scared to death, really,” Breck admitted with a grin, “but I have been under fire enough to have learned not to let my knees shake visibly.”
“And I want to tell you right now, that I think that plan of yours and Jane’s to run Hurricane Island as a summer colony is good and I hope and believe that you will make a good thing of it. You can count on me to talk it up because I want my stock in the company to bring in big returns,” Mr. Wing said, shaking Breck’s hand once more.
Afterwards, Breck told Jane that he felt like the President of the United States at his inauguration, his hand had been pumped up and down so much. Jane had laughed and said that she herself felt like Joffre must have after nearly all the school children in the country had proudly kissed him.
“Why not have some of these husky males carry Tim up on deck?” suggested Frances, “I don’t believe it will be too cold. Anyway, there is a wonderful moon and Jack can take his banjo up and sing to us.”
Her plan was approved and Tim was carefully carried up and deposited on the deck mattress, while the rest sat around on pillows. Jack came up with his banjo and started thrumming.
“What shall it be?” he asked. “It is no use you saying, though, because I don’t know anything but the darky songs I have picked up at home.”
“As if they weren’t the most tuneful songs in the world!” Ellen added.
“Why not sing that Revival Hymn, Jack dear?” asked Jane.
And Jack began: