Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/92

78 came back now, evidently with something to say.

"There's the queerest little inlet down there," he said, "with a tide eddy that runs into it. And there's an old motor-boat hove way up on the rocks in there among the bushes."

"What about it?" Felicia asked.

"I merely wished it were ours."

"Naturally it's some one else's."

"He takes mighty poor care of it, then. The engine's all rusted up, and there's a hole stove in the bottom."

"Then we should n't want it."

"It could be ﬁxed," Ken murmured; "easily. I examined it."

He stared out at the misty bay's end, thinking, somehow, of the Celestine, which he had not forgotten in his anxieties as a householder.

But even the joy of April on the bayside was shadowed when the mail came to Applegate Farm that day. The United States mail was represented, in the environs of Asquam, by a preposterously small wagon,—more like a longitudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else,—drawn by two thin, rangy horses that seemed all out of proportion to their load. Their