Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/119

Rh "Chris-ti-ine Jer-r-r-y ti-in-e!"

We shouted till our chests felt scraped raw, the way you feel when you've run too hard, and the wind tore our voices straight out to sea, away from Wecanicut. The lanterns stood quite still for a minute more, and then they bobbed away. At first I did n't believe that they were really growing smaller and smaller. But they were, and at last they were gone entirely, far down the shore.

"Are you crying, Chris?" Jerry said suddenly, in a queer, wheezy voice. He'd been shouting even harder than I had.

"I think not," I said, and my own voice was very strange indeed.

Jerry whacked me hard on the back, and said:

"Good old Chris! Good old Chris!"

The shore of Wecanicut was so black that we might have dreamed the lanterns, but I still could hear the way Father's own 103