Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/18

2 Billy Wentworth stood hesitating at the gap in the wall, looked up at the swaying, pale-green branches above him and down at the  green and white surf rolling in on the shore  below, sniffed at the keen salt breeze and tried  to tell himself that he did not like it. He was so thoroughly angry and discontented that  he could see nothing pleasant in the sunny  stretch of open water, the glitter of the tossing  whitecaps and the line of breaking waves  about the lighthouse a mile away.

“To spend the summer on a little two-by-four island with an old-maid aunt,” was his bitter reflection, “to have nothing on earth to  do and no one to do it with—it’s just too hard. I won’t stand it long.”

He stumped the toes of his boots in the dust of the narrow path with as much obstinate  sulkiness as though he were six years old instead of sixteen. Perhaps it made him even more angry than he was before, to discover  that, in spite of what he had been thinking,  he had stood staring for some minutes at the  big, curling waves as they rolled in, receded,  and came foaming up among the rocks again. Indeed he had been watching with such fascination that he could scarcely tear his eyes