Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/170

150 season for sure and that you’re leaving us. How early next spring will you be coming back?”

Billy was a little surprised, and for the second time that day. Early in the morning he had walked through the woods to say good-bye to Sally Shute. She too had asked when he would come back, taking it cheerfully for  granted that he would never fail to return  soon.

“I’m not coming back next year,” he said now; “we’re going out to the Rockies to camp,  my father and mother and I, and the year  after—well, I hardly know where we’ll be  then. We don’t often go to the same place twice. No, maybe I won’t ever be coming back.”

Captain Saulsby knocked the ashes out of his pipe and smiled slowly.

“You’ll be coming back,” he said; “there’s nobody can keep away always. You’ll think that the prairies, and the big mountains, and  all the wonderful things in the West can satisfy you, but a time will come, perhaps all in  a minute, when you’ll remember the shining  blue of the water out there, and the sound of  the surf on the beach, and the smell of wet