Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/266

248 to impose on me,” said Mr. Weston, as he came up  and read aloud the last two lines of the epitaph:—

“I wonder if she ever tried to invite them all to a birthday party. The Town House would hardly have held them all.”

There were hardly any other epitaphs that deserved especial attention on account of their peculiarities, although many of the stones were quaintly and rudely  carved, and there was one that they noted especially because it marked the resting-place of a negro slave. Near the summit of the hill they all paused in solemn thought  for a moment, for the little monument commemorated the  death by drowning of sixty-five Marblehead fishermen who  were lost in ten vessels during a fierce storm off the Banks  of Newfoundland more than fifty years ago.

Thinking of the sorrow that must have come to all these families, Brenda and Julia and Mr. Weston walked  down the hill a little less gayly.

One afternoon the three went over to Gloucester,—a long expedition, as they had to change cars twice. But in the end they enjoyed it very much, and, as it happened,  not one of the three had ever been there before. Mr. Weston insisted on going down on the wharves, and visiting the old fish houses. He found one or two odd characters, quite worth sketching, and he amused himself (and the girls, too, for that matter) by another kind of