NELLY SACKETT’S HOME
Over another 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-ready hand. “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 curious shells 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 the Round Robin this summer. Next summer it will be
different, perhaps.”
“What do you hear from your F----, 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. I thought 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. I
thought 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,” he said, “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’ _that_ story,” 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 young Victor
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.