a surgeon was called in and passed favorably on breck’s handiwork. tim’s fracture was doing as well as could be expected, but he was to be put to bed for three weeks or more and then, of course, must walk on crutches for many days to come.
“isn’t that the limit?” grumbled tim. “and the ‘boojum’ will be sailing away before i know it and i’ll be left here with nothing to do.”
“you can be knitting,” suggested frances, “at least your bones can be.”
“that’s right! laugh—you don’t care if my hip is broken.” tim was cross and miserable and didn’t care who knew it. it was hard right in the middle of his well-earned summer vacation to be laid up in bed just when he had made the acquaintance of such a jolly crowd too. he did not confess to himself that it was frances and not the whole crowd that he was going to miss.
mrs. reynolds had given her boy the room opening into the living room for his sick chamber. it had been a sewing room through all the generations and it was something of a wrench for her to change it, but a live son weighed more in the balance than all the dead traditions, even though they were coffin traditions, and it was nice to have tim downstairs where his friends could see him and where, when he once got up and around on his crutches, he would not have to contend with stairs. cousin esther grumbled, but cousin esther was opposed to change of any sort.
“it is out of reason to take a sewing room for a bed room,” she objected. “i’d as soon think of making a pumpkin pie with a top crust or a mince pie without one. a sewing room is meant for a sewing room and a bedroom for a bedroom. i like things left as our maker intended them to be.”
with which bit of theology she let the matter drop, but tim always felt out of place in the sewing room. when frances made the above suggestion about his bones knitting, he felt a grim satisfaction that the process was to go on in the sewing room.
“you don’t care a bit,” he repeated, keeping frances’ hand in his a moment after the rest of the boojummers had left his room, having bid him good-bye before going on a jaunt to ’sconset.
“nonsense! i do care! as for you, you are most uncomplimentary,” declared frances. “you should be eternally grateful to your much-abused hip for getting itself broken. how otherwise would you ever have known the inmates of the ‘boojum’?”
“oh, i’d have found you somehow. what is to be is to be.”
“what has been was, you mean.”
“well then, i’m going to grin and bear it as best i might. but please come see me when you get back from ’sconset. gee i’d like to go over there with you. it’s a peach of a place. it’s not quite so formal as nantucket town, more rough and ready. when all the summer folk go, i run over there and visit cousin esther sometimes. she loves to have me, although she is cleaning house most of the time getting rid of the leavings of the actress who rents her place for the summer. i am sure it is clean as clean, but she is never content until she has scrubbed every board three times at least. i’ll get cousin esther to ask you to come too. will you?”
“but i’ll be gone—out west—home—somewhere by that time.” frances tried to draw her hand away but tim held on to it.
“but sometime would you go if cousin esther asked you?”
“would she make three kinds of pies?”
“sure! ten kinds!”
“all right then!” frances was laughing and blushing but she gave tim’s hand a little answering pressure and left the boy happy and not so indignant with the fractured hip as that member no doubt deserved. after all, he reflected, there is generally a reason for everything.
“cousin esther!” he called after the boojummers were out of the house, “please come here a minute.”
“well, what is it?” and esther came and stood by his bed, looking down on the red-haired man that seemed to her still the little boy who had been the plague and joy of her summers since he was able to crawl. she tried to look stern, but her eyes were soft in spite of her.
“what do you think of the one called frances?”
“the one who found you lying up behind the boulder?”
“that’s the one.”
“well, she ate a piece of every kind of pie. that’s doing pretty well for a girl born out of new england. she looks as though she came of good stock not to be seafaring.”
“her ancestors went west in a prairie schooner and i fancy they had as much to contend with and more than ours did on the bounding billows,” laughed tim. “will you ask her to come visit you over at ’sconset?”
“are you serious, boy?”
“as serious as i ever was in my life. her last name is bliss and if she will have me that will be my middle name for the rest of my life. don’t tell mother. i want to wait and see if she will have me. i don’t see how she can.”
“i don’t see how she can help it if she has any sense,” declared esther with some indignation. “not have you indeed!”
“well, if she does, will you teach her how to make pies?” teased tim.
“of course, if her mother has neglected to do so.”
“all right cousin esther. i’m glad you like her. please hand me that scrap book over on the table before you go. it is the deuce and all to be laid up and not able to wait on myself.”
after esther went out tim lay idly fingering the scrap book. he chuckled to himself as he thought of the way his cousin had praised the girl he hoped to persuade to love him at some future date.
“a mouth for pie! that’s the way she lauded her,” he laughed. “nothing but a mouth for pie! well a slice from three kinds was going some. i fancy they must be almost at ’sconset now. i do wish i could have been the first one to show her ’sconset,” he mused. “where is that little poem i want?” and he rapidly turned the leaves of the scrap book.
“here it is! i am going to read it to her some day. it fills the bill exactly i think.”
’sconset by-the-sea
by jean wright
a queer old fisher village by the sea,
with long low-lying sand, where great waves boom
and break the whole year through. wide moors
rich with gold gorse and purple heather bloom.
the grass-grown, straggling streets run in and out
past houses weather stained and strange to see;
built in the fashion of a sailor’s heart
like to a ship as what’s on land can be.
and all in front, each housewife’s care and pride,
a tiny garden. rows of poppies red,
gay flaming hollyhocks and mignonette,
and good old-fashioned “jump-ups” rear their head.
quaint folk, with many a tale of bygone days,
when men sailed off and sometimes came no more;
when women stayed at home to work and wait,
and wear their hearts out on that smiling shore.
the romance of those other braver days
hangs like a halo ’round the queer old town;
shouts in the wind that comes across the sea;
sighs in the wind that comes across the down.
look out across the tumbling surf toward spain
on some clear, lazy, golden, summer day,
a vague mirage of towers and battlements—
it is the place to dream one’s life away.
