Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/164

144 suffered greatly for a little time; but as the weeks passed and people began to forget the  disturbance that they had never quite understood, Harvey Jarreth began to come into his  own again.

He was jauntily dressed as ever today, in the light grey clothes that made his sandy complexion still sandier, and that by their extreme  of fashion showed just how many years they  lagged behind the present mode. His straw hat was a little frayed and battered at the  edges, but he wore it at just such a cheerful  angle as when Billy had first seen him.

“Well, Captain,” he began genially, “that was a queer business about that city friend of  mine, wasn’t it? And the joke of it is that it looks just now as though you had been right  about him. That’s pretty funny. Ha, ha!”

“It will go right on being just as big a joke,” returned the Captain sourly. “You had better go home and practice laughing at  it until you can manage something better than  that cackling you’re doing now. It takes a lot of learning for a man to know how to laugh  at himself.”

Jarreth’s thin face flushed and he shifted his feet uneasily.