jane went over to him, smiling in her friendly way. the boy slipped down from his rock with the grace of a wild animal. jane thought that she had never seen a more beautiful and charming looking boy. very tall and with a small well-set head, he had the unmistakable look of race.
“i am jane pellew and this is allen breckenbridge,” said jane with a strange little thrill as she realized that she had used breck’s full name in the introduction.
she stretched out her hand and it was taken with the greatest poise and courteousness. “i am frederick gray,” he said, dropping her hand and giving breck a cordial little nod.
his voice had the peculiar quality of keeping the same tone, never rising or falling at the end of a sentence, and there seemed to be a definite spacing between each word. it did not, however, produce the monotonous, sing-song effect that jane had so often noticed in the new englanders’ voices. the boy’s voice was full and rich and soothing.
“i didn’t see you until you stood up,” jane told him.
“no wonder, my clothes are just the color of the rocks. i sometimes feel that i am really part of this island, do you know,” frederick gray said with a trace of wistfulness. “we watched your yacht come in the other night. i was afraid you would go away without my seeing any of you.”
jane wondered who “we” were. she had an odd feeling that the boy was the only person who stayed on the island, for as he had said, he did seem such a part of it.
her wonder was short lived, for as she and breck and the boy went up a narrow rocky path, approaching the first of the group of houses, two tow-headed little boys emerged from the bushes and ran scuttling into the open door of the house.
breck called after them reassuringly, “hey, buddies! come back, we won’t hurt you!”
frederick gray smiled and told them that they were his youngest brothers and that they were afraid because they weren’t used to seeing anybody but his mother and father and his oldest sister.
“she is away at school now, so they will probably be afraid of her when she comes back.”
“what in the world is she doing away at school this time of the year?” said jane, in surprise.
“i meant college; she is at columbia in the summer school,” the boy explained, adding rather proudly, “i am going to new york and live with her this winter, because daddy wants me to go to horace mann before i go to yale.”
“you are sure you have got time to show your island and sure you don’t mind it,” breck asked, feeling that if he were the owner of such a near future he would no doubt be very busy.
“you don’t know how glad i am to see people. i’m always so glad when people come on the island. it is really a pleasure to show them around. you know, of course, that this was once a quarry, and at one time several hundred workmen lived here.”
“we didn’t know it, but we certainly should have if we had given any notice to that huge crane and all those slabs of granite heaped up on the beach. the workmen, of course, lived in those cottages?” asked breck interestedly.
“i wish daddy would come out and tell you about it, because he knows so much more about it than i do, though i was a little boy when we first came here. there is an awful lot of machinery connected with the quarry; i never have been interested in it, and so don’t know very much about it. daddy knows all about every kind of machine. but i can’t disturb him now because he is working on his plans for some sort of submarine detector,” the boy told them as he led them past his vine-covered home towards a frame building about a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide.
“how did you happen to come here to live? you don’t mind me calling you fred, do you?” jane asked as they entered the strangely shaped building.
“my uncle had the contract to build a sea wall and he knew that granite was on this island. he found that it would be cheaper to start a quarry here and carry it over to where they were building the sea wall than it would be to have to transport it from some other point much farther away. after the sea wall was finished and there wasn’t any more use for operating the quarry, my uncle took his workmen and they went back to their regular working place. then, you see, my uncle didn’t like to leave all these houses and machinery without some one as a sort of overseer, and as daddy likes to be quiet so he can work on his inventions, they got together and made arrangements for us to come out here.”
“don’t you ever get bored or lonesome,” breck asked the boy.
“it was more fun before my sister went away, of course, but there really is plenty to do. i made enough money off lobsters last year to buy that boat you passed on the way in and then, of course, there are an awful lot of books daddy brought with us.”
“breck,” said jane, wrinkling her forehead, “why couldn’t fred sail tim reynolds’ boat back to nantucket?”
breck looked at the boy and shook his head. “too much for him to handle by himself.”
but the boy’s face lit up at jane’s words. “what size is she?”
“thirty feet, tim said, didn’t he, jane?”
“i could trim the jib aft and handle her all right,” the boy said with such confidence that breck would have believed him if he had said he intended to give thomas lipton and his “shamrock iv” time and come in ahead of him.
“don’t you suppose you could get some other boy to go along with you, so it wouldn’t work you so hard?” jane said, rather amused by breck’s rapid change of expression.
“virg bradford over on the mainland might go. i’ll row over and see and let you know tonight.” the boy was delighted at the prospect of a real sail.
“then suppose you just come in time for supper and we can talk it over with mr. wing and tim and see what they say,” said breck, not considering it worth while to mention consulting fred’s father, as it was evident from the boy’s account of the inventor and from his own quick way of deciding things, that he was the man of the family.
fred walked them the length of the building, telling them that it was the polishing room.
“you look mighty thinky,” breck said to jane, noticing that she had wrinkled up her forehead again.
“i believe it is a real thought, too, this time. i was just thinking that this long building might have been some ancient dining hall. you know the kind where ‘the eagles scream in the roof trees.’ with all these cottages and this for a sort of mess room, i don’t see why some one couldn’t make a lot of money running this place as a sort of summer colony. it has a marvelous outlook, wonderful boating, and the swimming would be all right i suppose if you could ever get used to such freezing water. how about it, fred?” she asked, turning to the boy.
“i go in every day and so do mother and the kids. dad too, if he thinks about it,” fred answered. “i used to think that it was an awful pity for those houses to be empty in the summer and sometimes i tried to get dad to talk about it, but he always said that it wasn’t any use, because we had enough money and he couldn’t be quiet if there were a lot of summer people always about.”
“do you suppose there would be any trouble about renting the island from your uncle?” breck asked the boy. he had been looking around at the attractive cottages with growing interest and a decidedly ruminating eye, since jane had suggested the possibility of a flourishing summer colony. gradually the thought was taking place in his mind that it would be an unusual and remunerative way of spending the following spring and summer. the thought of himself as a rising young business man was amusing to him as he remembered his position as a deck hand on mr. wing’s yacht. then he came to the realisation that such a project would take some capital and he said a smothered “damn!”
but jane heard it. “what? breck, things in general or some person or thing in particular?”
“me first and next my luck, then things.” then he told her what he had been thinking, adding that it would give him endless opportunity for copy and also unlimited time to write but, of course, it was a foolish impossibility.
“breck, you are terribly ignorant about business and i don’t suppose i am much better, but i seem to know that there are such things as companies and, as long as i thought of it, i think i at least ought to have a chance to buy some stock. besides let’s tell mr. wing about it, and when i get home i will talk it over with daddy. it would be an awful lot of fun even if we didn’t make much off of it the first year. i know lots of people at home that are always trying to find some new place to spend the summer. dad and i were wondering what i was going to do with myself just before i left this summer. i don’t appear to have been born with any special talents and i couldn’t bear the idea of making my debut. of course, i couldn’t take the housekeeping over from aunt min, because that’s all she has in her life.”
“weren’t born with any special talent! why, jane, you were born with the greatest talent in the world, that of making everybody with whom you come in contact love you. and you just wait till i can offer you a house to keep,” breck said, entirely forgetting fred.
“wouldn’t these houses be enough to start on?” asked jane. “i’m young yet and not much of a housekeeper.” jane was blushing and her eyes had a very happy light in them.
“oh, jane! what do you mean?” cried breck, catching the girl’s hands and drawing her towards him.
“i simply mean that you needn’t wait until you can get any more houses before—before—you—before—”
“before what?”
“before you ask me to keep one for you. now aren’t we modern, though? i reckon i’ve done the proposing, but i’m not the least embarrassed over it. of course, if you had refused me, i might have felt a bit shy.”
jane’s voice was muffled by reason of the fact that breck was allowing very little room for speech and her sentences had more punctuations than a mere writer can put in print.
“refuse you! oh, jane, what a darling you are! i can’t believe this thing has really happened to me, when i think how miserable i have been during the last months.”
“well if you doubt it you can question the witnesses,” laughed jane.
“oh, that boy fred!” exclaimed breck. “i forgot him.”
but frederick gray had beaten a hasty retreat when he saw how matters were going between his new-found friends and had disappeared around a boulder, but his little tow-headed brothers were not so nice in their behavior. silently they had entered on the love scene and had stood hand in hand viewing with wonder and astonishment the surprising carryings on of the hurricane island interlopers.
“ith that girl your thweetheart?” lisped the younger one.
“yeth, and the thweeteth thweetheart ever,” declared breck. “come back!” he called to frederick, whose figure he could see in the distance. “the worst is over, old man. that is, over until next time. you are going to be a member of this firm, fred, so you must come and let us talk it over with you.”
“all right, sir,” said fred, whose ears were crimson from embarrassment. he looked at breck with even more admiration than before. any man who could win such a girl as miss jane pellew was surely a hero in the eyes of the island boy. fred was almost sorry he could not help being such a gentleman. when he saw how the wind lay, he felt it incumbent upon him to turn his back and walk off but he had a pardonable curiosity about how a man went to work to make love to a girl like jane.
hand in hand, jane and breck made their way to the beach. it seemed to the pair of lovers that the already perfect day was even more perfect than it had been before. the sky was bluer, the sea more sparkling. the “boojum,” riding at anchor in the bay, looked like a fairy ship, while the gulls that circled around her seemed whiter and more graceful than ever gulls had been before.
“oh, breck, isn’t life beautiful?” said jane, but in the corner of her eye was a tiny unshed tear. “it is so beautiful i wish everybody knew how beautiful it is, all the poor little sick children and tired mothers.”
“why, honey, i was just thinking the same thing. i don’t know why being happier than i’ve ever been in my life should make me think of the suffering children on the east side, but it has somehow. those gulls shouldn’t make me think of little half-starved children over on avenue a. heaven knows there is nothing white about them, except their little pinched faces, but they do all the same.”
“i know why you are thinking of them!” exclaimed jane. “it is because this place would be such a corking one to bring the kids to. let’s have our scheme be not just a money making one but one to help somebody besides ourselves. oh breck, let’s try to have some of those little creatures here with us every summer.”
“jane, jane, what a girl you are!” and breck wished there weren’t so many little tow-headed boys on the island, for he felt he’d like to try to make jane understand a little better how much he adored her but the little grays were trotting along by their side totally unconscious of how out of place they were.
