Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/63

Rh, and I guess it did, perhaps. When you’ve followed the sea since you were hardly  more than so high, and suffered by it, won and  lost by it, hated it and loved it, why it’s not  easy to find out, all of a sudden, that you’ve  got to stop on shore for all the rest of your  days.”

Billy would have pursued the subject further, but the old man changed the course of the talk. He took up the model of the Josephine and set it down upon the doorstep beside the boy.

“Now, young fellow,” he said cheerily, “suppose you name over these ropes as far  as we have gone, and we’ll see if you are as  much of a landlubber as you were when you  came here a week ago.”

Billy, nothing loth, took up the challenge and went through his lesson with great credit,  making nothing of naming the parts of the  rigging of the little schooner and of running off lightly many terms that had so lately been pure Greek to him.

“Good,” said the old man when he had finished. “I do believe that you can hope to be a sailor yet.”