CHAPTER IX
Overanother stile in the handsome wall clambered the Round Robin, and the girls found themselves in simple pasture-land once more. This was land that Captain Sackett would not sell to the rich man who had wanted to own and enclose for his sole pleasure the whole shore line from the Harbor to Camp Round Robin. The little path was almost lost in a tangle of blueberry bushes, juniper and sweet fern, where the wild roses were already in bud. But it led inevitably to the Cove at the head of which stood the old white house.
“What rough walking!” grumbled Anne, holding up her white skirt and picking her way between the briars. “Not much like Father’s nice path.”
“It is the old Indian trail,” said Nancy.“Once it was all like this along the shore to our place and beyond, so Mother says. That was fifteen years ago, before any of us were born.”
They spied Captain Sackett at a distance, hammering at some new lobster-pots on the beach in front of his house. His motor-boat was anchored a little way out in the water, and an old dory was drawn up on the beach. “Let’s give the yell and surprise him,” said Nancy.
“Heia! Hoia! Together! Round Robin!” hailed the Club; Anne alone standing silent. The old man straightened up, glanced about, then whirled his hat in the air, shouting in return:
“Hi there! Hi yourselves!”
All the girls but Anne raced up and danced around him in a merry ring, hand in hand.
“Glad to see ye, glad to see ye!” he cried. “Hello! There’s another one comin’ along. Why, it’s Anne, ain’t it? I thought so!” A glow of pleasure lit up his weather-beaten face as Anne walked slowly in his direction, and he advanced to take her not-too-readyhand. “Why, how you’ve grown!” he said delightedly. “And how fine you’re dressed! Comin’ to make a call? Come right up to the house, the hull of ye, and see Aunt Polly. She and Nelly will be tickled to death to see ye all.”
Nothing loth, the Club raced up the path to the house with its trim lilac bushes on either side of the door. Aunt Polly, plump and motherly, was waiting for them, with Nelly grinning over her shoulder.
“Come in! Come in!” said Aunt Polly hospitably. “I’m right glad to see you. I’ve been expecting you before this; but we know how fast the time goes with young folks who have so many nice things to do. Now, isn’t it lucky I’ve just made some fresh cookies? Nelly, you run into the pantry and bring a pan of those cookies for the girls.”
Off scampered Nelly. And the girls followed Aunt Polly through the spick-and-span kitchen into the sitting room. It was a dear little room. About the walls were old-fashioned pictures of ships and shipwrecks. On the mantel and what-nots were curiousshells and branches of coral, bits of carving and queer treasures that the Captain had picked up in his many voyages. Great bowls of nasturtiums stood on the table and on the top of the little parlor organ. There were shelves of books between the windows, and books lay about here and there. The walls looked pleased, like the walls of a room in which people read aloud.
“Here’s Anne, Polly!” said Cap’n Sackett, calling his sister’s attention to the last of the party who came in while the cookies were being passed. He spoke gravely, and Aunt Polly as gravely replied, turning to greet the girl.
“Why Anne! How do you do, my dear?” Nelly’s mother gazed at Anne as the old man had done, with an eagerness that seemed to embarrass her. “Well, how you have grown this year!” continued Aunt Polly softly. “I suppose I ought to call you Miss Poole, now you are almost a young lady. But it doesn’t come natural.”
“It really doesn’t matter what you call me,” said Anne pertly. “I’m just a member of theRound Robin this summer. Next summer it will be different, perhaps.”
“What do you hear from yourF——,from Mr. Poole?” Cap’n Sackett questioned Anne, while Polly and Nelly chattered to the others. Anne bit her lip; but she answered almost in spite of herself, it seemed.
“I haven’t heard from Father since I came. He’s a poor correspondent, Mother says.”
“I guess I know that!” The old man shook his head understandingly. “I’ve known him nearly twenty years, Anne, for better, for worse. How’s the baby?”
“He was well when I left Chicago,” answered Anne shortly.
“Father’s in Canady, ain’t he?” inquired the Captain. “Not comin’ down this summer, no?”
“No,” said Anne. “And I shall write him about Idlewild. He will be very angry when he hears how badly the place looks.”
The Captain glanced at Anne out of the corner of his eye. “Why, I’ve been up there now and again,” he said slowly. “He told me to keep an eye on the place, and I have. Ithought it looked all right enough, for an empty place—kinder lonesome, of course; but you can’t help that.” He saw the girl wince at the word “lonesome.”
“It looks horrid,” insisted Anne.
“It’s a big barn of a place,” agreed the Captain. “Not so homy as this old shack of mine, now I’ve got Nelly and her mother here. Say, you used to like the Cove here pretty well once, Anne. Do you remember?”
Anne glanced around the simple room with the ornaments that she remembered very well from visits in her earliest childhood. “It seems a long time ago,” she said. The old man sighed.
“A long time ago!” he repeated. “Though you aren’t so very old, Anne. I wish you’d come oftener, like you used to do. Maybe you will this summer, now you are with these other folks? They are real neighborly.”
Anne hastened to change the subject. “The only thing that looks right at Idlewild is my little garden,” she said. “It really seems as if somebody had been taking care of it.” The Captain grinned.
“Well, I kept an eye on that too,” he confessed. “Nelly helped me weed it. We two couldn’t manage the whole big garden, of course. But we thought the little one looked so lonesome there by itself, we had to fix it up. It does look good, don’t it? Those mignonettes are comin’ on fine!”
“Oh, thank you!” said Anne simply. “It was nice of Nelly to take that trouble for my garden.”
Nelly came over to where Anne was sitting and smiled at her rather wistfully. “Don’t you want to come out and see the rabbits?” she asked. “They are in a pen behind the house.”
“Rabbits!” Anne exclaimed. “I love rabbits.”
“You know these rabbits, too,” smiled Nelly. “They belonged to Mr. Poole. Uncle saved them.” The three were making their way around to the back of the house where the animals lived.
“When the critters were sold,” explained the Captain rubbing his hands, “I just bought in these rabbits, as well as the chickens. Ithought it would please you, Anne, and I liked the little fellers, too. The big white one is right cute.”
“Oh, that’s Plon!” cried Anne, delighted. “You dear old thing! I am so glad you are safe!” She took the rabbit up in her arms and hugged him rapturously.
“He knows you, all right!” chuckled the Captain. “You can take him back with you, if you want to.”
“Oh, no, I am afraid he would be lonesome,” sighed Anne.
“Then you must come often to see him here,” said Nelly Sackett eagerly.
“Yes. I will.” Anne hugged the rabbit closer, while she smiled upon the old man and his niece for the first time that day.
“I wish I could have saved the pony for you too, Anne,” said the Captain. “But he cost too much. I’m not rich, you know.”
“The pony was growing old and cross,” confided Anne. “I didn’t love him as I do Plon. But why were the animals sold? I don’t understand!”
The Captain shook his head. “Orders,” hesaid, “Mr. Poole’s orders. His agent sold everything about the place, furniture and all.”
“The furniture!” Anne stared. “Then the house is quite bare inside?”
The Captain nodded. The other girls who had been roaming about the house examining the Captain’s treasures now came running out to ask questions. “Oh, Captain! What’s this big tooth with pictures on it?” asked Beverly holding up an engraved ivory cone.
“That’s a whale’s tooth,” said the Captain, “tattooed out in China. And that’s a swordfish’s sword,” he answered Gilda’s question about the strange natural weapon she was carrying.
“Oh, won’t you tell about this, please?” begged Norma, holding out a bottle in which was a tiny ship with all sails set. She had found it on the mantel-shelf among the other treasures.
“Yes, tell them about that ship, Eph,” urged Aunt Polly who had followed them into the door-yard. “That is a good story.”
“How did ze tall ship go into ze leetle bottle?”asked Gilda in amazement. “I don’t know!”
“Oh yes, Cap’n!” pleaded Nancy. “Do tell that story. Have you heard it, Anne?”
Anne shook her head. “I’ve heard a lot of the Captain’s stories, but never that one,” she said.
“Oh, I dunno about tellin’thatstory,” protested the Captain. “It wa’n’t anything.”
“That was a copy of the ship he saved,” interpolated Aunt Polly. “They had it made for him, those Portygees. Ain’t it cute? I don’t see how they ever got it into the bottle, as the little foreign girl says.”
“Did he save a ship?” asked Anne with round eyes, hugging the rabbit.
“More than one!” chuckled Aunt Polly. “Ask anybody in this county. But that was the best one. Eph was a real hero, everybody says. He’s a real hero still, for that matter, isn’t he, Nelly? Once a hero, always a hero, that’s what I say!”
“Oh nonsense, Polly!” exclaimed Cap’n Sackett testily. “You hadn’t ought to talk such foolishness to these girls. Now youngVictor Lanfranc, down to your camp, he is a real hero. He got wounded ’way up in the air over the German lines, that young Frenchy did. He bombed the factory where they made their wicked guns; and he got a medal for it. I admire that lad! I never got nothin’ but a salt water duckin’. He! He!” Captain Sackett gave a merry little chuckle.
“You ought to have had a medal,” insisted Aunt Polly.
“Oh, you must tell us about it!” begged the girls in chorus. “Heia! Hoia!”
“Now, please begin,” commanded Nancy.
They all sat down on the grass, Anne still clasping Plon in her arms, and listened breathless to the Captain’s story, which he told while he whittled at a wooden peg.