The Project Gutenberg eBook, Us and the Bottleman, by Edith Ballinger
Price, Illustrated by Edith Ballinger Price

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Title: Us and the Bottleman

Author: Edith Ballinger Price

Release Date: June 22, 2004 [eBook #12681]
[Date last updated: January 9, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

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US and THE BOTTLE MAN

BY

EDITH BALLINGER PRICE

Author of "SILVER SHOAL LIGHT,"
"BLUE MAGIC," etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR

1920

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Greg rigged himself up as an Excavator
We hoped the Bottle Man would like the letter
"Hang on, Chris!" Jerry said. "I can get it"
"Ye be Three Poore Mariners"

CHAPTER I

It began with Jerry's finishing off all the olives that were left,
"like a pig would do," as Greg said. His finishing the olives left
us the bottle, of course, and there is only one natural thing to do
with an empty olive-bottle when you're on a water picnic. That is,
to write a message as though you were a shipwrecked mariner, and
seal it up in the bottle and chuck it as far out as ever you can.

We'd all gone over to Wecanicut on the ferry,--Mother and Aunt Ailsa
and Jerry and Greg and I,--and we were picnicking beside the big
fallen-over slab that looks just like the entrance to a pirate cave.
We had a fire, of course, and a lot of things to eat, including the
olives, which were a fancy addition bought by Aunt Ailsa as we were
running for the ferry.

When we asked her if she had any paper, she tore a perfectly nice
leaf out of her sketch-book, and gave me her 3 B drawing-pencil to
write with. It was very soft, and the paper was the roughish kind
that comes in sketch-books, so that the writing was smeary and
looked quite as if s