By Miss Nora A. Smith
A TRULY LITTLE GIRL. Illustrated.
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN, AS HER SISTER KNEW HER. Illustrated.
CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE. Illustrated.
THE CHRISTMAS CHILD AND OTHER VERSE FOR CHILDREN. Illustrated.
A HOMEMADE KINDERGARTEN.
NELSON THE ADVENTURER. With frontispiece.
THE CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE.
UNDER THE CACTUS FLAG. Illustrated.
THREE LITTLE MARYS.
BEE OF THE CACTUS COUNTRY.
IN COLLABORATION WITH MRS. WIGGIN
TWILIGHT STORIES. Illustrated.
THE STORY HOUR. A Book for the Home and Kindergarten. Illustrated.
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS, A Book of Nursery Logic.
THE REPUBLIC OF CHILDHOOD.
I. FROEBEL’S GIFTS.
II. FROEBEL’S OCCUPATIONS.
III. KINDERGARTEN PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN, JENNY LIND, AND JIM CROW]
CHILDREN OF THE
LIGHTHOUSE
BY
NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
I. THE ISLAND 1
II. STUMPY AND THE STOREHOUSE 7
III. THE LIGHT AND THE LIGHTHOUSE 16
IV. HONEST JIM CROW 26
V. A PICNIC WITH STUMPY 35
VI. HOW THE CAT CLIMBED 46
VII. IN THE FOG 57
VIII. THE WHITE SLIPPER 72
IX. LESLEY TO THE RESCUE! 87
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE CHILDREN, JENNY LIND, AND JIM CROW _Frontispiece_
“JIM CROW,” A PRIVILEGED VISITOR, ADDING AN
OCCASIONAL LOW CROAK TO THE CONVERSATION 24
AS THEY DREW NEAR AN ODOR AROSE THAT WAS THE
BEST KIND OF PO’TRY IN ITSELF 37
LESLEY COULD PLAINLY SEE HIS SMALL FIGURE IN THE
GATEWAY 49
HE DANCED GAYLY ABOUT THE ROOM, TOSSING HIS CROWN
BEFORE HIM LIKE A BALL 85
Drawn by Elinor M. Goodridge
CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE
∵
CHAPTER I
THE ISLAND
“Will-ery you-ery come-ery with-ery me-ery and-ery play-ery?” shouted
Ronald from the little patch of green in front of the Lighthouse.
“Yes-ery, I-ery will-ery!” answered Lesley, jumping up from the sand
and tucking her book in a cleft of the rocks. Scrambling up the cliff
like a sturdy little mountain goat, she reached Ronald laughing and
rosy and panting out breathlessly, “What-ery shall-ery we-ery play-ery?”
“I hadn’t thought,” said Ronald, descending from their “secret
language” to plain English. “Maybe we’ll get Jenny Lind and bring up
some kelp to put on our gardens.”
“I don’t call that play,” objected Lesley; “that’s good hard work!”
“Oh, nothing isn’t work,” said Ronald, sensibly, if ungrammatically,
“if you do it for play.”
“You are the funniest boy, Ronnie, I ever knew in all my life!”
exclaimed Lesley.
“Sure I am!” laughed Ronald. “I must be, for I’m the only boy you ever
did know!”--and here they both broke into a hearty peal of merriment
that brought their mother, smiling, to the window.
It was true enough. Lesley and Ronald, eleven and eight years old, were
the only children on the island and the only ones who had ever been
there, but they were not by any means the only young things. There was
a score of light-footed, dancing kids, there was a comfortable number
of chickens, a rushing, scampering horde of rabbits, “Jim,” the pet
crow, and uncounted half-grown sea-birds in the shelters of the cliffs.
As for grown-ups, there were the children’s father and mother, Malcolm
and Margaret McLean, and the old Mexican sailor, Pancho Lopez, commonly
known as “Stumpy.” Then there was the donkey, Jenny Lind, so called for
the power and melody of her voice, and of course the parents of all the
kids, chickens, rabbits, and sea-birds. In the pools of the rocks and
on the beach there were jellyfish, great and small, starfish, crabs and
sea-anemones, but these, although they added to the population of the
island, could not be said to increase its gayety.
Gayety, though, as everybody knows, never comes from outside; it is
just something that bubbles up from within, and Lesley and Ronald
McLean each had a boiling spring of it in their own hearts.
The springs had not ceased to bubble after what the children considered
Ronald’s first-class joke, when the sound of clattering hoofs and the
roll of wheels announced the approach of that Jenny Lind whom they had
intended to use as a playmate.
“Run, Ronnie, quick!” cried Lesley, “and see if father’s going down to
the beach. Maybe we can go with him.”
“Hi! Father! Father!” called Ronald. “Wait for us!” running at top
speed toward the cliff.
The donkey was pulled in at once, turning her head toward the children
intelligently as they scrambled down the rocks to the car and starting
on her way the moment she felt their weight and knew they were on board.
The children’s island, one of those in San Francisco Bay, is not a
large one--perhaps three miles around--but it looks as if it were three
times three miles deep in rocks. There are tall gray peaks shining like
spear-heads above the water--peaks where the sea-birds build; great
stretches of gray stone like castle walls, with towers and battlements;
scattered fragments of granite heaped up like crumbs from a giants’
banquet, and ten trillion, two hundred and forty-one billion, five
hundred and ninety-seven million, six hundred and nineteen thousand,
four hundred and three stones and pebbles of various sizes along the
shore.
Oh, no, there is no beach; just a rocky island with rocky edges and old
Ocean singing and sighing and laughing and crying all around and about.
No two-legged, or four-legged, or ever-so-many-legged creature could
draw loads from the shore to the Lighthouse over such a roadway, even
if it had been on level ground, and so Malcolm McLean, with the help
of old “Stumpy” and a man brought from the mainland for a week, had
laid down rails the entire distance and prevailed upon the Government
to send him a little car which Jenny Lind pulled with ease over her
private track.
“Going down to the storehouse for oil,” called Father, looking around
at the youngsters from his perch in front. “You can stay down there
with Stumpy for a while, if you like, or go back with me.”
“Oh, Stumpy, Stumpy!” cried Ronnie. “Maybe he’ll tell us a story.”
“Maybe he will,” said Father, dryly, nodding his head; “he’d rather
tell stories than work any day.”
“Perhaps,” said Ronald, thoughtfully, “it might be just the same as
work if you had to make up the stories.”
“But he _doesn’t_ have to,” came quickly from Lesley; “they all
happened to him.”
“No, not all,” eagerly, from Ronald; “not ‘The White Slipper’--I’m
going to ask him for that to-day.”
“No, not ‘The White Slipper,’” agreed Lesley. “But I wish he’d tell us
po’try, like what mother reads sometimes. I made up some myself last
night about Jenny Lind.”
“About Jenny Lind? You couldn’t make po’try about a donkey!”
“You just listen now and see if I couldn’t,” cried Lesley.
“To shaggy Jenny Lind
There came an awful wind
And blew her over the cliff--
Over the cliff ... over the cliff--” slowly--“What _was_ the last line?”
“Which made her puff and piff,” laughed Ronald.
“No such word as ‘piff,’” objected Lesley.
“It’s just as good as ‘puff,’” answered the youthful rhymester. “Isn’t
it, Father?”
Father merely gave an absent-minded murmur, which might have meant
either that it was, or that it wasn’t, and touched Jenny Lind lightly
with the loop of the reins.
Up flew Jenny’s hind legs, bounce went the children, flat on the floor
of the car, and all question of po’try was dropped as they drew up to
the storehouse.