Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/22

4 which had stopped every few minutes at stations with unintelligible names and had sometimes expired altogether for no apparent reason. These vagaries had made Joan lose the boat-train, and the discomfort of the trip was increased by a two hours' wait at Tewksville.

The steamer proved less erratic than the train, for she plodded steadily and conscientiously down the bay, the winds of the Atlantic growing fresh and more fresh about her broad bows and fluttering her pennants gallantly. Joan clutched her hat and wished that her coat were thicker.

Somewhere on the misty, unknown shore lay Joan's destination—Quimpaug and the Harbor View House. Rather unwillingly she reviewed for the hundredth time the cause of her ill-considered journey. Mr. Robert Sinclair had told her that she was unsympathetic, intolerant, and unimaginative. Those were not the exact words he had used, to be sure, but it amounted to that in the end, Joan reflected with a frown, as she recalled his grave and earnest phrases. She liked Mr. Sinclair immensely, besides thinking him a very clever portrait-painter; and she ought to have seen that he liked her immensely, also. Otherwise he would never have told her