Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/126

 her talk about everything on earth except the Fortune of the Indies. On the warm rough grass of Bluff Point they would sit down, and Mr. Bolliver would often produce a book from the wide pocket of his square-cut coat. Then, with the sea-sound in their ears and the gulls whistling above them, they would take turns reading to one another—old sea-lore and golden verse—till the sky mellowed with sunset, and they would hurry home, late for tea.

It was about this time that Jane developed the idea of keeping a journal, or, more properly, a log. That is, she thought it was her idea, and certainly, if it was Mr. Bolliver's, he had introduced it in a most unobtrusive manner. She wrote it in a nearly empty exercise-book, which she covered with canvas that it might look more like a log and less like French Composition. Some of the entries she showed to Mr. Bolliver when he was in Resthaven, and some she didn't, but as many of them were rather illuminating, perhaps we can do no better than to pause and look through the book. The log was kept more or less in proper nautical fashion, and never once neglected to mention the state of the weather and the direction