for all
its beauties. How many features, new to Albert, she called to his
attention, and how her naive observations, so fresh and delightful, each
and all interested him, need not be quoted. It was an entirely new
experience to him, and the four hours' pull in and out of the island
coves and around isolated ledges where Uncle Terry set his traps passed
all too quickly.
"Do you know," said Albert when they had returned to the little cove
where Uncle Terry kept his boats, and as he sat watching him pick up his
morning's catch and toss them one by one into a large car, "that the
first man who thought of eating a lobster must have been almost starved.
Of all creatures that grow in the sea, there is none more hideous, and
only a hungry savage could have thought them fit for food."
"They ain't over hansum," replied Uncle Terry, "but fried in pork fat
they go middlin' good if ye're hungry."
That afternoon Telly invited Albert to row her up to a cove, at the head
of which was a narrow valley where blueberries grew in profusion. "I
want to pick a few," she said, "and you can make a sketch of the cove
while I do." It must be recorded that helping her picking berries proved
more attractive, and when her pail was full, all he did in that line was
to make a picture of her sitting in front of a pretty cluster of small
spruce trees, with the pail beside her and her sun-hat trimmed with
ferns.
"Your city friends will laugh at the country girl you found down in
Maine," she remarked as she looked at the sketch, "but as they will
never see me, I don't care."
"My friends will never see it," he answered quietly, "only my sister.
And I am going to bring her down here next summer."
"Tell me about her," said Telly at once, "is she pretty?"
"I think so," replied Albert, "she has eyes like yours, only her hair is
not so light. She is a petite little body and has a mouth that makes one
want to kiss her."
"I should like to see her ever so much," responded Telly, and then she
added rather sadly, "I've never had a girl friend in my life. There are
only a few at the Cape of my age, and I don't see much of them. I don't
mind it in the summer, for then I work on my pictures, but in winter it
is so lonesome. For days I do not see any one except father and mother
or old Mrs. Leach."
"And who is Mrs. Leach?" asked Albert.
"Oh, she's a poor old soul who lives alone and works on the fish racks,"
answered Telly, "she is worse off than
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