Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/55

Rh "Better let me see it, my lad," said Jerry, rolling over among the pine-cones and sitting up.

Greg got his precious letter with a snatch and a squeak, and scurried off with it. I pitched Jerry back on to the pine-needles, because I knew he'd never let the thing go if he saw it.

"Oh, let him send it," I said. "It's perfectly all right, and it will do the Bottle Man heaps of good."

But Jerry growled about "beastly scrawls" and was n't pleased with me until supper-time.

Somehow we all began calling our island person the "Bottle Man" after Greg did, for it seemed as good a name as any for him, seeing that we did n't know his real one. We read the letter from him after supper to Aunt Ailsa, and she laughed and liked it, and so did Father. We also asked Father what the Latin meant, and he made 41