Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/25

Rh when Billy could not leave school to go also. It was during the Easter vacation that he had travelled from his school in the Middle West  to New York, to see his father and mother off  on their long voyage; then he had gone back  unwillingly to face continuous days of missing them and of rebelling vainly against the  destruction of his hopes for the summer.

When Miss Mattie Pearson, his mother’s sister, had invited her reluctant nephew to  stay at Appledore, she must have realized that  the resources of the hotel and the little fishing village that the Island boasted, would  scarcely be sufficient to satisfy him. She seemed to have been thinking of Captain  Saulsby even when she wrote her first letter,  for she had said, “I hope you will find one  companion, at least, who will interest you.”  She had a great affection for the queer, gruff,  bent, old sailor, and must have felt that he  and the boy were bound to become friends. And now Billy, standing before the captain himself, shifting uneasily from foot to foot  and looking into those small, twinkling blue  eyes, was beginning, much to his surprise, to  feel the same thing.

“There are some strawberries down yonder