CHAPTER XXIII
Onebeautiful blue day early in September, several persons stood on the pier at Old Harbor watching the little steamer move away. It was bearing the larger part of the summer colony back to their winter homes, leaving but a few to wave them a good-bye. But this was not a sad occasion, not the regretful ending of anything. Instead it was but the happy beginning of something still better; which is what all so-called “endings” ought to be.
Nelly Sackett and Anne Carlsen stood on the pier close together, waving their handkerchiefs to the group gathered on the upper deck of the boat, where Anne had stood alone that June day weeks ago, so helpless and unhappy. Down below, Cap’n Sackett in hisdory was waiting to row the two girls back to the Cove and Aunt Polly.
For this is what Tante and the Captain had agreed between them, after a long consultation and much thinking. Nelly and Anne were both to spend the winter in the city, where they could go to school with Nancy and plan the next step in the work each most wanted to do. They were to live in the big Batchelder home, almost as if they were a part of that hospitable family.
And already Round Robin had planned a grand reunion for the holidays. Instead of Anne’s going to visit Beverly in the south, Beverly herself had promised to come to Boston. Norma would find it very easy to come on from New York; and Victor too, for a few days at least. Gilda was already a neighbor of the Batchelders in a happy suburban home. Cicely would have to be represented by a letter from across the sea; and Dick by another from his school across the great western plains. But East, West, North, and South would be together in spirit at least on Christmas Day, looking forward to another summer.
Meanwhile, the Captain could not spare his two girls just yet, he said; even if it meant beginning school a few weeks late. This delay would give them all time to make certain readjustments and arrangements. And it would give Anne a chance to see her country home in its most beautiful days, when the leaves had turned and the grass would be rusty-brown, and the wild cranberries ripe in the high bogs along the dunes. For it is not until the summer “transients” have gone away that the wild country puts on its choicest beauty, and its gaudiest colors; when the ocean plays its grandest games for the benefit of its own people, the sea-lovers who linger beside the great deep and are loth to go away.
“I am glad I am not on that boat now!” Anne confided to Nelly’s ear. “Just think how hot and stuffy it will seem in the city when they wake up to-morrow morning! But we shall still be breathing this sweet, spicy air, and looking at this blue water!”
“It’s pretty here in the winter, too,” said Nelly. “Sometime we must invite the Round Robin here for the holidays; some day whenyou and I have made our fortunes, and have turned our old house into a wonderful steam-heated, electric-lighted, summer-and-winter home. Won’t that be fun?”
“We’ll do it!” cried Anne, with a firm nod of her head—like her grandfather’s—that meant business.
“Heia! Hoia!” shouted the girls on the steamer, as the engine bell rang. “Good-bye, Nelly! Good-bye, Anne! See you soon! Together! Round Robin!”
“Heia! Hoia!” answered the cousins on the pier. “We’ll bring you all a branch of trailing yew and a cedar tree from Round Robin when we come down.”
“And a bunch of fresh catnip for Patsy, and some ripe cranberries! Together! Round Robin!”
The people lingering on the pier grinned good-naturedly at the two girls as they climbed down into the Captain’s boat, when the steamer was out of sight. Whatever belonged to the Captain they accepted without question.
“Ye’re havin’ two little lassies now instead of the one, ain’t ye, Cap’n?” chuckled LonnyMaguire, leaning over the railing for the customary parting shots between him and his neighbor.
“Wal, I dunno!” said the Captain with a twinkle. “Accordin’ to ’rithmetic, two gals for half a year ought to be about the same as one gal for a whole year. Ain’t that so?” Lonny retired with a guffaw, to spread this joke abroad.
“Two girls for always, Grandfather!” Anne corrected him. “Wherever we are, even if it is far from here, it’s home by the sea where you are.”
“Yes,” said Nelly, taking an oar and handing another to Anne, “wherever we are, we shall be in one boat, pullingTogether!”
THE END