Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/168

Rh was going to marry Mr. Something-or-other, so our poor man went off sadly to his island and did n't write to her any more. He'd never heard of us, because of course her name is n't Holford. And she'd never heard of his aunt, nor Blue Harbor, nor the island, so of course she did n't know anything about it when we read his letters to her. Oh, it was very tangly and bewildering and it took lots of explaining, but at the end of supper there was just enough ginger-pop left to drink to both of them.

Afterwards she and Father played the 'cello and piano, because we asked them to, and the Bottle Man sat with his arm over Jerry's shoulders, watching, with the light on his nice, brown, kind face. And Father sat with his head tucked down over the 'cello, just the way I remembered there on the Sea Monster, and the candles shone on Aunt Ailsa's amberish-colored 150