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 darning-needle to re-thread it (making a very wry face in the process), "we'd 'a' bought the island long ago, Obed and me—though there's a pretty steep price for it, disadvantages considered—but there's incumbrances as to the title; an', besides, when Gran'f'ther Probasco dies (that's my gran'f'ther over to Peanut Point—he's feeble, very feeble—Obed an' me'll have to take his farm and live there. It's a real sightly place, an' the land's splendid. But it'll be a hard pull for us to leave the island after spendin' so much of our lives here."

"I should think so," assented Gerald. "I don't see why that Mr. Jennison you speak of—the one who partly owns the old place still—don't come over to take a look at it now and then, in the summers. I should think he would like to."

The face of the farmer's wife changed.

"Mr. Jennison isn't the sort of man to care about that," she replied. "He does come—sometimes. As it happens, husband kind o' expected him this very month, on some errand he wrote about last July. There's a hull roomful of his things up-stairs."