Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/42

26 Saulsby’s,” she replied ungraciously. “His land begins back there.”

“Ah, very true, Miss Shute,” the man went on. “He’s rather a queer one, our friend the Captain, now isn’t he? He hardly seems to remember the place is his, I think. Doesn’t come here very often and look after his boundary fences and all that, does he?”

Even Billy could see that the man’s eagerness betrayed him and that he asked the last question a shade too anxiously. Sally observed it as plain as day and had no hesitation about saying so.

“If you want to find out all that so much, you had better ask Captain Saulsby himself,”  she told him emphatically. “I really think he knows best about his own affairs.”

“You are right,” the other agreed instantly, “and I will ask him. But you see,”—here he dropped his voice to a very confidential tone—“the old Captain is a hard man to do business  with, very hard. I am trying to buy this land of him, not for myself, you understand, but  for a friend, a man who is a stranger in these  parts, and immensely wealthy. He has taken a fancy to Appledore Island and wants to