Marjorie 1.0

Marjorie Jefferson is used to a life of indulgence in
Ohio, but when her parents must travel overseas for

her father’s health, Marjorie is sent to stay with
Lucy, her childhood nurse. Lucy lives on the
beautiful island of Monhegan, where hard work and
kindness are of great value. However, Marjorie
doesn't see anything valuable in living on Monhegan
Island, and Dan, Lucy's husband, doesn't appreciate
Marjorie's poor attitude. The longer Marjorie stays
on the island, though, the more she finds that
there's something special about life on Monhegan
that could forever change her –something more than
just the fresh sea air.
For use with the Level 5 Language Arts course

SKU 384.3
WRITTEN BY SIDNEY BALDWIN
Cover design by Phillip Colhouer
Cover illustration by Anna Speshilova
First published in 1950
Originally titled Marjorie of Monhegan
© 2022 Jenny Phillips
goodandbeautiful.com
CONTENTS
Marjorie Comes to Monhegan�� 1

Dan Will Be Obeyed��14
The Picnic at Lobster Cove��24
Marjorie Has a Surprise��35
School Begins for Marjorie��47
Aunt Melvina’s Cottage��60
Trap Day��69
Christmas Preparations��77
Jock Breaks a Doll��90
Who Stole the Money?�� 106
Marjorie of Monhegan�� 114
CHAPTER 1
Marjorie Comes to Monhegan
The tap of the bell on the teacher’s desk signaled

recess, and the children raced for the open door.
Emma Hammond, a slender gray-eyed girl of
eleven with long red curls, ran to join her next-door
neighbor, Lucy Barter, wife of Dan, the best fisherman
on the island, who was sitting on a nearby rock.
“Emma, you said yesterday you’d like to see Marjorie
Jefferson. Well, you may have the chance.”
Emma looked at the letter in Lucy’s hand.
“Is that from her?”
“From her mother. She wants me to take Marjorie
for the summer. Her father, who hasn’t been well, is
going to a place in Europe for a cure, and, of course,
Marjorie’s mother must go with him. But it isn’t any
place for a little girl.”
1
MARJORIE
“Monhegan’s a wonderful place for anybody,” said

Emma loyally. “You were her nurse, weren’t you? Will
you have to take care of her the way you did before?”
“I came to Monhegan with the Jeffersons. That’s
when I met Dan. But Marjorie’s as old as you are. I
wouldn’t have to be her nurse now.”
“I wonder how she’ll tell her friends where she’s
coming. Do you suppose she’ll look Monhegan up on
the map?”
“Probably she’ll just say, ‘It’s an island off the coast
of Maine, where fishermen live.’”
“She ought to say how beautiful it is, and that there
are cliffs, and two beaches, and a hotel, and summer
cottages, and that we’ve got a big bronze plaque set in
a rock that says that Captain John Smith landed here
in 1608—and that we’ve got a beautiful harbor, and
Cathedral woods—” Emma was out of breath.
“She can’t tell all that; she doesn’t know it. She was
just a baby when she was here before. She’s not very
strong, and she’s the only child, so probably she’s been
spoiled. I’ll have to ask Dan about her. I’m afraid he
won’t want anybody to live in our house.”
“Here he comes now. You can ask him. It would be
fun to have another girl—especially now that Dan’s
sister Mary can’t come, the way she did last summer.”
“Mary’s big enough to help her mother this year.
She was a lot of help to me, but we can’t expect a city
2
child to take hold the way Dan’s sister did.” Lucy got to
her feet and joined her husband on his way home from
the fish beach.
“What’s in the pail, Dan?”
“Roe—the first of the season. What’s in your letter?”
“From Mrs. Jefferson. She liked the rugs.” Lucy did
not want to speak of Marjorie until she had Dan in a
good humor.
“She’d better like ’em. They were swell. I almost kept
them for myself.”
The husband and wife went up the hill by the
schoolhouse to their own cottage, which was still
called “Aunt Clementina’s place,” though Lucy and
Dan had lived there for four years. Aunt Clementina
had been proud of her garden, and Lucy never opened
the picket gate without a feeling of pleasure. There,
in season, grew all the flowers—the old-fashioned
ones, as well as newer plants that the seed catalogs
offered. The hundred-year-old house was square and
steep-roofed, with gray shingled walls. Every day in
summer found easels set up along the road, and the
pictures of the rose-covered cottage had taken many
prizes in city exhibitions.
“Here’s your roe—cooked with eggs, the way you
like it, and here’s your mince pie—about the last of the
mincemeat.”
“Stop fussing and sit down. You’ve got something on
3
MARJORIE
your mind, I can tell. Mrs. Jefferson want more rugs?”

“No, it’s something else. You remember Marjorie,
the little Jefferson girl?”
“I’m not likely to forget that nuisance. A man
doesn’t forget his courting days. What about her?”
“Mrs. Jefferson wants us to take her for the summer.”
“What!”
“Now, Dan, wait a minute before you make up your
mind. She’s been sick, and the doctor wants her to
have a change of air. He thinks the sea would be good
for her. But—Mr. Jefferson has to go to Europe, so
Mrs. Jefferson thought of us.”
She looked at her husband’s stern face anxiously.
“They were awfully good to me—to us—when we got
married, Dan,” she reminded him. “I always wanted
to do something for them. This is the first chance I’ve
ever had.”
Dan looked at the photograph of the eleven-year-
old girl Lucy laid before him. He remembered small
Marjorie very well—brown eyes, black hair, and a will
of her own.
“She don’t look very good to me,” he said.
“Oh, Dan! Then you won’t have her?”
Dan didn’t want any strange girl in his house, but he
always tried to please Lucy.
“She says she’ll pay well. That would help toward the
new boat engine, Dan.”
4
“Something will have to help toward it. Fishin’ isn’t

doing enough. Well, Lucy, you’ll get all the bother. I
guess I can stand it for a summer. I’m not home till
evening, anyhow.”
“Marjorie’ll be around in the evening now,” his wife
reminded him. “She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“Suit yourself.” And Dan went whistling down
toward his lobster traps on the fish beach.
And that was the reason, two weeks later, Lucy and
Dan stood on the Monhegan wharf, watching the
prow of the mail boat as she plowed her way toward
the island.
Marjorie was not eager to arrive. The excitement of
getting ready for the summer had died down when she
found that, instead of the pretty silk clothes that her
friends were buying, her summer wardrobe was made
up of sturdy cotton clothes and tweed coats, since her
school clothes were all she would need in the little
fishing community.
“Don’t I dress up for dinner?” she had asked, back
home in Ohio.
“They don’t even eat dinner,” her father had
commented. “They call it supper, and it ends with
stewed fruit—how well I remember!”
The long gray shadow on the horizon that her
mother pointed out as Monhegan grew larger, and
spots of white turned into houses, with the tallest thin
5
MARJORIE
one a lighthouse. Boats lay at anchor between Duck

Rock and the island. Though it was still early in the
season, there were a good many people on the wharf,
having come down to see the little girl some of them
remembered.
Lucy was at the edge of the slip as the gangplank
was pushed out.
“Do you remember me, Marjorie?” she asked as she
took the little girl in her arms. “And do you remember
Dan, who used to carry you?”
“I remember Dan very well,” said Marjorie’s mother,
shaking hands.
“I’m glad to see you, Mrs. Jefferson,” the tall, young
fisherman greeted her. “If you will show me your bags,
I’ll take them up to the house.”
The Jefferson luggage was sorted out from the pile
of boxes, cartons, bags, and lumber that had arrived on
the mailboat, and the four began to walk up the hill.
Marjorie was tired. She had not slept well on the
sleeper that had brought them from Boston, and the
breakfast in Thomaston was so early that she had not
been hungry. She did not look at the long hotel at
the top of the hill or listen to the eager words of her
old nurse, Lucy, who was telling Mrs. Jefferson of the
changes that had been made since the summer when
they had all been together on the island.
“Our house has a lovely garden, set in the rocks.”
6
Lucy stopped to pull a leaf from the fragrant bay

bush that grew beside the road and handed the
crushed leaf to her guest. “I’ve kept Aunt Clementina’s
flowers as well as I could. Dan helps me. He loves
flowers.”
“This is a lovely place.” Marjorie’s mother drew long
breaths of the fresh, cool air, tinged with the pungent
bay she was holding. “Smell this, Marjorie.”
“I’m beginning to remember, a little.” The girl
looked around her. “Didn’t we used to get ice cream
cones up a long boardwalk?”
“Yes, on the second floor of a fish house, but now we
have a new store—two new ones, one the post office.
We pass them in a minute. The place we live in was
built by Dan’s grandfather.”
Past the schoolhouse set on the hill and a turn off to
a second road that led to the lighthouse they went—
Dan coming along with the Jefferson luggage in his
wheelbarrow. Tired as she was, Marjorie exclaimed
with delight as a picket fence came in sight, and the
old gray house sat quietly beyond a spring garden.
Great clumps of lupine—blue, pink, and white—were a
background for tulips, narcissus, and hyacinths.
“Oh, Mother, the lilacs haven’t bloomed yet.”
Marjorie caught a branch hanging over the fence.
“Ours were over long ago.”
“Spring stays here in the island.” Lucy swung open
7
MARJORIE
the gate and let her guests enter. “I’ve saved a lot of
seedlings, so you can have your own flower bed.”
But Marjorie was not interested in flower beds. She
was not interested in the old house, or her little room
under the eaves, with an old-fashioned spool bed
and a patchwork quilt that had been made by Dan’s
grandmother when she was a little girl. She would not
try to take a nap, but clung close to her mother.
Not even the entrance of Emma, who would be her
next-door neighbor, made her smile, and at the first
chance, she whispered, “Mother, I don’t want to stay
here. I’m going back with you.”
Lucy heard her. She was sorry for Marjorie’s mother,
but she was sorry for Marjorie, too. She knew what it
was like to come away from everybody and everything
a little girl was used to.
“Wouldn’t you like to have Emma take you up to the
light?” she suggested. “You can see the whole island
from the top, and Emma can show you where you’ll
have lots of good times this summer.”
“I’m not going to stay here this summer,” Marjorie
answered.
“We’ll go to the light, of course,” said her mother.
“Get your sweater; it’s still cool.”
“I’ll have supper ready by the time you get back,”
Lucy said. “We eat early. Dan is up in the morning
before the sun is, so he goes to bed with the birds.”
8
“How funny!” said Marjorie.

“Those are fishermen hours. You’ll have to be a
fisherman this summer.”
Marjorie did not expect to be a fisherman. Not all
of Emma’s eager stories about the island—the meadow
that was now filled with frost flowers but later would
have blue iris, and still later cattails; not her stories of
how the island children fished for pollock from the
sterns of their fathers’ boats moored in the harbor;
nor her description of lobster picnics on the rocks of
Lobster Cove, where they boiled lobsters over fires of
driftwood—made Marjorie feel any better. Her mother
was leaving the next morning, and she was going with
her, and nothing Emma could say would make her
change her mind.
She was afraid to go up the long, winding stair to the
balcony outside the light, and her mother did not leave
her, but they sat for several minutes on the long grass
outside and looked over the water to the mainland.
Emma wandered away and went down the hill to her
own house.
For the first time in her life, Marjorie found her
mother firm in her decision to leave her daughter
on Monhegan while she joined her husband in New
York. None of Marjorie’s tears could change her mind,
although it was a sad person who entered Lucy’s
kitchen, where Dan was sitting, waiting for his supper.
9
MARJORIE
“A real fisherman’s supper, Marjorie,” he said kindly.

“Clam chowder, pilot biscuit, and hot applesauce and
gingerbread.”
Marjorie had been hungry, but the big bowl of
chowder set before her was so new that she did not
think she could eat it. She put in her spoon and lifted a
quarter of an onion. She hated onions, but her mother
was anxiously watching her, and Marjorie loved her
mother too much to disappoint her.
“I’ll try it,” she said bravely. She tasted her first
spoonful critically, and it was so good that she emptied
her big bowl and even asked for more. By bedtime she
was so sleepy that she hardly knew when her mother
tucked her into bed, and the tears she had expected to
shed were forgotten.
But there were plenty of tears the next morning
when she woke to find a thick fog outside her window
and watched the drops of water collect on the bushes.
When Dan, looking at the big old clock, said that it
was time to go to the wharf, Marjorie broke down
completely.
“Mother! You can’t mean to leave me here! I won’t
stay in this horrid, nasty little house while you and
Father go away and have a good time. You can’t really
mean it. I won’t stay. I’ll run away. Oh, I think you’re
horrid!”
Lucy was glad that Dan had started ahead, carrying
10
Mrs. Jefferson’s bags. Marjorie threw herself on the

couch in the kitchen and buried her face in the pillow.
Nothing her mother could say made her sit up.
“Marjorie, the boat is whistling, and I have to go.”
Her mother pushed the hair back from Marjorie’s hot
little face. “Won’t you even say goodbye?”
More miserable than she had ever been in all her
life, Marjorie got to her feet and stumbled outdoors
blindly. She did not try to stop crying as she walked
by her mother’s side. In Ohio she would have been
ashamed to cry in public, but now she did not care
who saw her, or what they thought. When at last
the mail boat pulled away from the wharf, neither
Marjorie nor her mother could see each other for the
tears they were both shedding.
“That young one is a spoiled piece, used to getting
her own way,” said Dan, who was waiting with Lucy. “I
wish her mother had taken her.”
“Now, Dan”—Lucy smiled up at him—“the child’s
sick; she’s come to get well. Any little girl would feel
the same, leaving her mother for the first time.”
“Come on, take her home. I’ve got to go to the fish
beach,” Dan answered.
Marjorie crouched on the edge of the wharf, her
head buried in her arms. The rest of the people left,
going about their morning work. The boxes and
cartons brought by the mail boat were loaded into
11
MARJORIE
trucks and carried away. At last Lucy and the little girl
were left alone.
“Well, you haven’t outgrown your tantrums,” Lucy’s
calm voice broke through Marjorie’s misery. “It would
be best if you take your mind off of yourself.”
Her voice was kind. She sat down beside Marjorie,
and the child put her head in her nurse’s lap.
“Now, let’s be sensible.” The older woman patted
the straight brown hair. “Here you are, and here you’re
going to stay till your mother comes for you. You can
be miserable, or you can make the best of things. It’s
too bad it is so foggy—things seem worse without the
sun. Now we’ll go home and get settled.”
In her little room, Marjorie found fresh tears. She
was lying on her bed, feeling very sorry for herself,
when she heard Dan’s voice in the kitchen below.
“Well, she is here, whether I like it or not, and we
will have to make the best of it. I never thought I’d
have anybody under my roof who thought my house
wasn’t good enough for them.”
“Give her time.” Lucy put scraps of salt pork into
her skillet.
“Fish hash?”
“Yes, I’m out of meat. Bring up a haddock, if any
of the men are in. When are you going to pull your
traps?”
“As soon as this fog lightens.” Dan paced from
12
window to window. He was restless without his work.

Lucy lighted a lamp, although it was just noon.
“I think Marjorie’s asleep, and I won’t call her.” But
Marjorie came slowly down the stairs.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” she said.
Dan strode to the table, picked up Marjorie’s plate,
and put on it a small portion of fish hash. He buttered
a slice of bread for the side of the plate and poured a
glass of milk from the white pitcher.
“That’s your dinner, Marjorie.” His voice was firm.
“Come on now and sit down.”
13
CHAPTER 2
Dan Will Be Obeyed
In all Marjorie Jefferson’s life, she had never

been given such an order, and she looked at Dan in
amazement.
“I will not eat it,” she said. “Why should I eat if I’m
not hungry?”
“You ate no breakfast, and your body needs food. I
mean what I say, Marjorie. Eat your dinner.”
Marjorie deliberately laid down her fork and leaned
back in her chair.
“Dan,” Lucy began softly, but Dan stopped her.
“She is a guest in this home, and I’ll take no back
talk.”
“Nobody said I had to obey you.” Marjorie’s brown
eyes were flashing. “Lucy’s my nurse; she’ll take care
of me.”
14
Dan Will Be Obeyed
“Lucy’s my wife and not a nursemaid. You’re

big enough to take care of yourself. Now eat your
dinner.”
“I won’t eat my dinner,” snapped Marjorie, temper
and tears rising together. “I think you’re perfectly
horrid. You get me here, away from my mother and
father, and then you—you boss me around. You’re
being paid for my board. I’m not dependent on you.
I’ll do as I please.”
Before Lucy could stop him, Dan picked up
Marjorie’s plate and led her before him to her room
upstairs. He was not rough, but by the time she
reached her bedroom, Marjorie was thoroughly
frightened. She waited for Lucy’s footsteps, but Lucy
did not come.
“You’re right in one thing,” said Dan, putting the
rejected plate of food on the table. “Your board is
being paid, and this is your room. This is the place you
can do as you please. In the rest of the house, you will
be respectful.”
Marjorie could hear him go back to his place at the
table. Lucy spoke of some island matter, and presently
Dan left the house.
When Lucy came upstairs, she found an empty
plate on the table and a little girl sitting by her window
looking out on the fog-drenched garden. She longed
to take Marjorie in her arms and comfort her, but she
15
MARJORIE
was afraid that any expression of sympathy would

bring the tears back.
“It’s best to do as Dan says,” she began. “When the
captain of a ship says a thing’s so, that’s the way it has
to be. Onboard boats, men learn young. The lives
of all the crew depend on the captain; he hasn’t got
time to explain what he means to do. You made Dan
angry, dear, saying you wouldn’t mind. I don’t suppose
anybody’s ever said that to him in his own house in all
his life.”
“I ate my dinner,” said Marjorie soberly.
“I see you did, and you’ll feel better for it. Now, you
just do what Dan tells you. He was impatient with you
this morning, crying in front of everybody, and that
made him more severe.”
“I’ll do as he tells me till I can get a letter to Mother,
and she’ll take me away. Do you think my father would
have me stay in a house where I was spoken to like
that? I guess you’ve forgotten Father.”
“If you feel like that, you’d better tell your mother to
come back and get you. It’ll upset her plans, and your
father won’t be able to have the treatments he needs,
but no matter. Or else you’ll be sent to a camp, but at a
camp, you’d have to do as you’re told.” She hesitated a
moment and went on. “You see, Dan doesn’t need the
money your father pays. We’ve never taken boarders,
like some of the other families. You’re just like a guest
16
Dan Will Be Obeyed
in this house, and Dan treats you the way he would

any little girl. He wouldn’t have anybody making a
fuss and saying they would and they wouldn’t. But you
can do as you like. Come down to the kitchen. Emma
will be in after school, and you can pop some corn.”
“I’m sorry, really I am.” Marjorie threw her arms
around Lucy’s neck. “I’ll try to be good.”
As Emma opened the door, the blast of a ship’s horn
sounded so clear that they all jumped.
“Good gracious!” Lucy tried to peer through the
fog. “That ship must be off her course!”
“I want to see her,” Marjorie went to the window.
“See her! How can you? You can’t see across the
road. Let’s go to the schoolhouse rocks,” said Emma,
and the three of them ran down the road and across
the rocks. Marjorie felt the water squash beneath her
feet, but her shoes were stout.
“She must be lying off Nigh Duck.” Emma listened
for the next blast of the horn.
Though the fog was wet, it was not cold. The roofs
of the cottages on the water showed for a moment as
the mist drifted by. Beyond lay the ship whose warning
note sounded.
“Hey, you!” A call went across the water. “What’s the
matter out there?”
There was a confused murmur of voices in the gray
air and then an answering call—“Where are we?”
17
MARJORIE
“You’re about on the rocks,” came the answer.

“Heave your anchor and lie to till the fog lifts.”
There was an answering shout, an indistinguishable
clamor of voices, and then Marjorie heard a new noise,
which Emma told her was the rattle of the anchor
chain.
“They’ll all come ashore for ice cream now,” said
Emma.
Marjorie would have liked to see them, but she did
not want to say so, and she and Emma turned back
toward the cottage.
“It is too bad that it is so foggy.” The drops of water
stood on Emma’s curls. “I thought we could have gone
up in the lighthouse this afternoon. Matt—he’s the
lighthouse keeper’s son—would have taken us. If he
likes you, he’ll take you up often. And we can fish from
his father’s boat.”
Marjorie’s little neck stiffened. If a lighthouse
keeper’s boy liked her! She was more accustomed to
deciding who she liked.
Dan was at home when Marjorie went in. She
looked at him shyly, but he said nothing. She hung up
her coat, which was damp with fog, behind the stove,
where there were other coats on the old wooden pegs.
“Did the schooner come in to the wharf?” Lucy
asked.
“She’s lying there—they have a load of fish, and they
18
Dan Will Be Obeyed
want to get to shore with it in the early morning.”

“We’ll walk down after supper, and Marjorie can see
what one of the Gloucester schooners looks like.”
From the island road, Marjorie could see that the
fog was beginning to lift, although the farther outlines
of the island were still in mist. The windows gleamed
from the cottages across the meadow, and the four
beams of the light revolved slowly, broadening as they
went, like a gigantic windmill.
“There’s somebody in the store studio.” Emma
pointed to the big window. Other lights—big and
little—dotted the village.
Marjorie caught Emma’s hand as they went along. “I
never saw anything like this,” she said. “Isn’t the island
lovely?”
Emma glanced about her. It was nothing new to the
island girl.
“It’s better than it used to be. Mother tells of the
days when there were only little kerosene lamps. And
the winter days were so short and the winter so long.”
Nobody seemed to mind the fog, for there were
small groups of people chatting in front of the houses.
The hotel was not open for the season, but there were
lights in the service end. The masts of the schooner
loomed up at the edge of the wharf, and Marjorie,
keeping hold of Emma, went over and looked down.
At first she was disappointed, for there was no sign of
19
MARJORIE
any kind of fish—only ropes and dirty-looking boxes

in piles about the deck.
“It doesn’t look very clean.”
“You can’t scrub a fish boat.” Emma knew what she
was talking about. “Even new paint doesn’t stay white
a week. The dories coming to the side knock against
her, and the ropes wear on the mast, and cleaning fish
all day covers the deck with blood and slime.”
“What’s the hole in the back for?”
“That’s the cabin where the crew lives.”
“Down that steep ladder? Why, it’s like a rabbit
burrow!”
“Do rabbits use ladders?” Emma wanted to know.
Marjorie wasn’t sure that Emma was teasing.
“Emma doesn’t know anything more about rabbits
than you do about boats,” said Lucy. “When a ship
comes in that Dan knows, he will take you both
aboard. This one is a stranger.”
It was a long walk home for a tired little girl,
and Lucy put her little charge to bed under the
old-fashioned spread, too tired even to remember her
prayers.
“Wake up, you sleepy thing!” Emma was standing
in the doorway. It was a bright morning. The fog was
gone.
“It’s the nicest day that ever was, and Lucy says we
can go down to Lobster Cove, right after breakfast.”
20
Dan Will Be Obeyed
“All right,” Marjorie yawned. “What time is it?”

“Six o’clock.”
“Six o’clock! I never got up at six o’clock in my life.”
But she bounced out of bed, and in a remarkably
short time, she was sitting in the sunlight, eating her
breakfast.
“Lucy said that if I took a bath every morning, the
cistern would go dry,” she reported. “What does she
mean—the cistern going dry?”
Lucy explained the plumbing of the house. “In the
winter we have to use our own water, from our cistern.
In the summer, just as soon as the frost is gone, we
have water from the island service.”
“It’s a good thing I won’t be here in winter.” Marjorie
couldn’t imagine a day without a bath.
“Don’t you have to go to school?”
“Have you lost your calendar?” Lucy wanted to
know. “This is Saturday.” She buttered slices of bread
and put cupcakes in a little bag. “You’ll be hungry
before you come back.”
The meadow in the center of the island was green
with the leaves of the wild iris whose blue buds were
just beginning to show. Marjorie exclaimed in delight
when she saw how thick they grew.
“In another week, they’ll be just solid.” Emma
looked over the meadow for a moment and then
dashed down the bank. “Don’t you come,” she called.
21
MARJORIE
“It’s soaking wet here, but I see some frost flowers.”

The black water rose in Emma’s footsteps, and her
feet were wet to the ankles as she came back, bringing
a few stems on which hung little white bells shaped
like a hyacinth but only half as big.
“These are my most favorite flowers.” She handed
them to Marjorie. “They’re nearly gone. I’m glad you
could see these.”
Their delicate beauty won Marjorie, too. The
full bloom bells were white, and each of the white,
curled-back tips was lined with fine, white hairs. The
unopened buds at the end of each stalk were deep
rose pink.
“How lovely they are! But we’ll have to go back.”
Emma looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
“Your feet are soaking.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said the island girl, sitting
down on the stone to take off her canvas sneakers. “I’ll
squeeze out some of the water, and by the time we get
to Lobster Cove, they’ll be dry—you’ll see.”
Marjorie hesitated for a moment, but Emma was in
earnest. She picked a burdock leaf.
“Put your flowers in this and leave them in the apple
tree; we’ll pick them up when we come back.”
At the top of the hill, the sea wind blew in their
faces. Across a field of waving grass, the land dipped
again to a valley whose shore was washed by the blue
22
Dan Will Be Obeyed
sea rolling in lazily. Marjorie began to run down the

rocky path. It was rough and uneven, but she could
follow Emma as she jumped from one spot to another.
On a big rock, Emma stopped and pointed.
“That old hulk is all that is left of a wreck,” Emma
said. “It came in long ago—before I was born.”
23
CHAPTER 3
The Picnic at Lobster Cove
Both girls ran straight across the little beach of the

cove, through the long marsh grass that sent out a
spicy odor over the rough rocks, never stopping till
they reached the waterline. The tide was high, covering
the beds of kelp that Marjorie might have slipped on—
city child as she was.
“I’m going to take off my shoes and stockings and
wade right out.”
“Oh, no.” Emma shook her head. “You don’t know
how rocks lie under the water, and anyway, it’s very
dangerous on this side. You can wade later, when the
tide is low and the pools are uncovered and the water
is warmer. Now, I’ve got lots of things to show you.”
A breaking wave showered them with spray, and
Marjorie followed her guide over the little winding
24
path, where the long tendrils of trailing yew covered the

rocks and the wild roses lifted their thorny branches.
“We’ll look for pretty pieces of driftwood.” Emma
stopped to tug at a silver-gray log lying under the yew.
At Marjorie’s feet were tangled and rusted heaps of
iron cables and rods and twisted bars. A great wooden
pulley was nearly worn through by the friction of the
ropes that had been pulled in it.
“Where did all this old iron come from?” she asked.
Emma gave a little shiver.
“I don’t like to look. That is all that is left of old
wrecks.”
“Wrecks?” Marjorie’s eyes were big, and she turned
to look at the hulk nearby.
“In the old sailing days, ships tried to make the
harbor. In thick fog they sometimes turned too soon
and piled up on these rocks. I never saw one. Dan has
seen two, I think. He could tell you.”
“Wrecks.” Marjorie tried to make the twisted mass
into the beautiful ships in full sail whose pictures she
had seen. “It doesn’t seem as though any ship couldn’t
see a way into the harbor.”
“Wait till you see it in fog like yesterday, or in the
winter snow. See that big cliff? That’s Gull Rock. In
storms the spray breaks over it, and I’ve seen the waves
crash and fall down on the land side.”
Emma led the way over the narrow paths, giving
25
MARJORIE
Marjorie a hand when the rocks were exposed and

smooth, and, slipping and climbing, they were
presently on the high ground behind Gull.
“How far do we have to go to get home?” Marjorie
wanted to know. She was still tired from her long trip.
“The nearest house is about a hundred feet away,”
said Emma.
Marjorie looked about her. There was a forest of
tall pines along the edge of the cliff and no sign of any
human habitation, but Emma disappeared between
the trunks, and Marjorie, following her, found herself
on the porch of an old house, whose windows once
looked down on Whitehead, another cliff facing the
open sea. Now, the trees had hidden the view.
“All roads ought to look like this.” Marjorie set off
down the rough, water-soaked, rutted road. “Winding
through trees with flowers growing on the edge of the
ruts.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you had to drive a delivery
truck up over the rocks!”
The two girls came out into a clear meadow. Below
them lay the village houses, some of them boarded
up and not open till July. As they went along, Emma
named the summer people who would be there later,
and before she knew it, Marjorie found herself by the
big tree where the frost flowers were waiting in the
burdock leaf.
26
“When will your school be out?” she asked Emma

as they passed the schoolhouse.
“June,” Emma answered. “But why don’t you come
to school with me? Miss Potter won’t mind. You could
sit in the seat in front of me.”
“I’ve never been in a one-room school.” Marjorie
didn’t think she would like it. But curiosity triumphed,
and Monday morning she went off with Emma to
meet the teacher and to try a new experience.
“Perhaps Marjorie would tell us what her
schoolroom is like,” Miss Potter suggested, when school
was in order. Marjorie did not like to stand up in front
of the class and talk, but she didn’t know how to say no.
“Our school is bigger, of course. And every grade
has its own room—sometimes there are so many
children that there are two or even three rooms to a
grade.”
“Jeepers,” said one of the older boys. “That many
children?”
“And how many teachers?”
“A room teacher for each room,” said Marjorie,
“and one for history—and gym and drawing—I can’t
remember them all. Sometimes we go to classes in
other rooms, and sometimes the teachers come to us—
it’s rather hard to explain.”
She saw Matt, the lighthouse boy, begin to figure on
his pad. But before anybody else could ask questions,
27
MARJORIE
she hurried to her seat and began a morning of

surprises.
“I never saw anything go so fast in all my life,” she
told Lucy at dinner. “Miss Potter just makes things fly.
She starts a recitation in history, and in a minute that’s
over and she’s hearing arithmetic. And before that
has hardly begun, she has the little ones in a line and
is holding up cards for them to read, and then she’s
dictating for somebody else to write, and then a class
is at the blackboard—I never saw so many lessons. I
should think Emma’s head would swim.”
“Emma doesn’t know any other kind of a school.
She began in the first grade and has gone right
through. She’s never even seen another school.”
“Plenty of people have learned a lot in that old
schoolhouse.” Dan joined the conversation. “There’s a
box up in the attic with old school books in it, and the
names of people who went to school here fifty years
ago are written in the fronts.”
“Fifty years!” Marjorie was astonished. “In that
building?”
“That very building.”
“Did you go there, Dan?”
“I did. You run your hand under the top of one of
the biggest desks. You’ll find my initials there, cut with
my jackknife. I worked hard to get them there without
being caught.”
28
“That’s Matt’s desk,” said Emma when Marjorie told

her the story. “The boys fight for it every year. They all
think Dan is wonderful and want to be just like him.”
“I don’t think he’s wonderful,” Marjorie sniffed.
“You don’t understand about Dan,” said his loyal
admirer. “He thinks you don’t appreciate Lucy or his
house.”
“I do, too.” Marjorie was astonished. “I’ve known
Lucy longer than he has!”
“You see, his little sister Mary was here last summer.
She’s just our age, but she helped Lucy all the time. She
washed the dishes and swept the floor and made the
beds and even cooked, and Lucy had more time free.”
She didn’t say that Marjorie did none of these things.
She didn’t need to.
“I never washed a dish in my life—except my doll
dishes.” Marjorie was quite positive. “I don’t want to
cook. Dan’s paid for my board. I don’t expect to work
for it.”
Matt, the boy from the lighthouse, joined them.
“If it’s as nice as this tomorrow, let’s take our lunch
and go down to Lobster Cove. The tide will be low
in the morning, and we can show Marjorie the sea
urchins and starfish in the pools.”
“Oh, yes!” Emma agreed. “We’ll be ready. Lucy will
pack a lunch for you, Marjorie.”
Lucy was quite ready to put up a lunch.
29
MARJORIE
“Why don’t you go with the youngsters, Lucy?”

asked Dan. “I’ll be gone all day; I’m going to the
mainland.”
“Oh, Lucy, do come!” begged Emma.
“I’d like to,” said Lucy happily.
“If you come, we can build a fire.”
“And cook our luncheon. Matt will like that.”
“Couldn’t we cook outdoors if we didn’t have
somebody older?”
“No, they won’t let children make fires on the rocks.”
So the next morning, four happy people started for
Lobster Cove. Matt, Emma, and Lucy carried baskets.
Marjorie had her hands free. She needed them to
balance herself as she ran over the rocks, for when
she came to the edge of the long ledges, she saw that
the tide pools were out of the water and were edged
with long brown kelp. Matt left Emma to help Lucy
put away the baskets and dig out the natural fireplace
made between several large rocks well above high tide.
He came to show Marjorie the places where she could
kneel and fish for the little sea animals just under the
water.
“My father says he played in these pools when he
was a little boy.” Matt lifted a green sea urchin and put
it on the rock beside Marjorie. It began to put out long
white tendrils, and Marjorie looked at it critically. She
was not sure she wanted to handle it.
30
“We stock these pools with starfish and limpets

from the other pools, so we are sure to have them
to show.” Matt was lining up the various kinds. “My
father taught me. If you leave spider starfish too long,
they eat up all the rest of the things.”
“Dan says that the oil from the boats will eventually
kill all the life amongst the kelp.” Emma ran over the
rocks and knelt by Marjorie. She took one of the sea
urchins up and held it on the palm of her hand just
under the water. The white tendrils came out and
waved. “Do you want to hold it?”
Marjorie didn’t, but she did not want to seem
afraid. She took it gingerly, and after the first feeling of
tickling, she watched it try to turn over, since Emma
had put it upside down.
“When the old wharf was there, it was built on
pilings, and we could row about under the roof. The
seaweed was thick with starfish then. Now you have to
hunt to find even one.”
“And Father says that when he was a little boy, they
could find lobsters, just by going down at low tide
and turning over the seaweed. They only set traps
when they wanted them to sell. Now, sometimes a
man doesn’t get half a dozen lobsters in ten traps. I
was blessed with the trap Father set for me this year.
I bought my own shoes and my spring coat with the
money I made.”
31
MARJORIE
“Isn’t anybody hungry?” said Lucy at last.

“Better get the wood then!” Matt sprang to his feet,
and Emma began to put the living toys they had been
playing with back on the kelp.
The children spread out and came back with
armfuls of driftwood. Lucy had taken out from a
hiding place the lid of a big tin can. It had been stored
upside down so that the soot and rust were all on one
side, and the other was bright and shiny.
Presently a small hot fire was burning under the
tin cover. Emma was laying strips of bacon to fry, and
in the hot fat Lucy broke eggs, one at a time, slipping
them onto buttered bread. It was all new to Marjorie.
She had never eaten food cooked out-of-doors before.
“Shall I fry another egg for you, Marjorie?” asked
Lucy.
“Couldn’t I fry it for myself?” Marjorie was really
hungry.
“Of course—here’s the egg.”
Marjorie looked at it.
“Hit it a sharp rap on the edge of the tin, and break
it open,” instructed Lucy.
Nobody ever made a success of breaking their first
egg, and Marjorie was no exception. She tapped the
shell gingerly, and it cracked in half a dozen places
when she tried to pull it open. The shell as well as
the egg fell into the pan. Lucy would have helped
32
Marjorie, but she was bending over the basket, taking

out her bottles of cold homemade root beer.
“That’s all right,” said Matt, fishing out the larger
pieces of shell. “That’s part of the fun. Eat a little
carefully around the shell—or shall I take this one and
make you another?”
“No, I’ll eat my own egg.” And Marjorie, rather
astonished at herself, did that, biting cautiously. She
didn’t mind the small pieces of shell—it was her egg!
After luncheon Marjorie wanted to go back to the
tide pools, but the tide had turned, and she found it
just as fascinating to watch the water come up higher
and higher, washing over a rock that had been well
out of water until it was completely submerged. She
saw the kelp lift and float and begin to drift back and
forth and the little streams of water run back from the
rocks. The waves were forming and breaking with a
foam cap.
“There’s Dan!” said Lucy, as a motorboat chugged
along the water.
“How do you know?” asked Marjorie.
“How do I know Dan’s boat? How do you know
your own house?” Lucy answered.
“I can name every boat in the harbor,” said Emma,
“and some of them I know by the sound of their
engines. Matt knows all the engines. He says they have
different voices.”
33
MARJORIE
“Wind’s coming up.” Lucy put everything into the

baskets. “We’d better go back.”
“Matt and I’ll take the baskets,” said Emma. “We
want to meet the mail boat. Matt thinks there will be
a box for him. You come slowly with Marjorie, Lucy.”
And the two island children were off across the rocks,
running up the hill path and disappearing over the
crest.
“They don’t get tired at all,” said Marjorie with a sigh.
“That’s because they’ve always lived on the seashore
and had good food, air, and lots of exercise. That’s why
your mother wanted you to come this summer.” Lucy
slipped her arm around Marjorie’s waist.
“I’ve always been delicate,” said Marjorie. “I’ve never
been able to romp.”
“You were strong enough when I took care of you.”
Lucy did not care for the smug tone in Marjorie’s voice.
“You’ll be strong enough again, after you’ve been here
a little. After all, it hasn’t been a week since you came.”
“Lucy!” Marjorie stopped for a moment. “Don’t you
miss the city, all the stores and the movies and lots of
people?”
“I thought I would,” the older woman answered.
“But after I married Dan, I didn’t have time to think
about it much. You won’t either, after you’ve been here
awhile.”
But Marjorie was not so sure.
34
CHAPTER 4
Marjorie Has a Surprise
The summer went by swiftly. With Emma, Marjorie

roamed the island, peeping into the windows of the
summer cottages, until their owners came to occupy
them, and climbing over the rocks at Whitehead and
Blackhead. Once, at Pulpit Rock at low tide, Matt
helped them across the narrow passage. There, cut off
by the rising water, they waited around the rock, eating
their sandwiches and feeling very venturesome, until
the next low tide let them cross back again.
When Marjorie found that the city children paid
no attention to her, her pride was hurt. Lucy told her
that her mother had not wanted her to make friends
with the off-island children, and when the children
in their turn ignored Marjorie, there were a few tears;
her pretty clothes made no difference, for half the
35
MARJORIE
Monhegan children wore the outgrown clothes of their

cottage neighbors.
Dan expressed his feelings plainly about the
youngsters who bothered the men on the fish beach.
They went where they were told not to go, did not
obey when they were spoken to, and got into mischief
in the fish houses and on the boats.
But when Dan took the three children off in his
boat, it was their turn to feel important. Marjorie, on
the prow, looked up at wistful faces one afternoon
when they were bound for Friendship.
“Where you going, Dan?” one of the summer boys
asked.
“To the mainland,” Dan answered.
“Gee, what a day! We’d like to go, too!”
“Can’t take you—private party.” And the boat shot
away from the wharf.
“Some of those kids are awful bold,” Matt confided
to Marjorie. “They hang around the wharf all summer
and invite themselves to go along any time a trip
starts. Some of the men are so good-natured they
take them and growl about it afterward. Dan’s got
more sense. Wouldn’t you think they’d know it isn’t
polite?”
Marjorie loved the harbor of Friendship, with its
dots of islands and its almost landlocked entrance.
That evening, coming home, the two girls were
36
sitting on the prow of the boat, their bare feet slapped

occasionally by a small wave.
“Look at the sky,” cried Marjorie, and Emma, who
was used to Maine sunsets, had to admit that this one
was something extra. The ripples made by the boat
broke up the reflections of crimson and gold into
lighter shades. The undisturbed water ahead was like
glass. Marjorie could hardly believe such beauty was
real.
“Look behind you,” Emma said as they came around
a point of the long island.
“I don’t want to miss a single bit of this side.”
“You can spare just a second,” Emma insisted. In
the east where she pointed was a thin, sharp line of
light.
“What is it? It can’t be the sail of a ship?”
The line of light grew deeper.
“If it’s a ship on fire, I don’t want to see it!”
“It’s the moon—the full moon.”
Steadily, slowly, the line of light widened until the
rounded top of the great moon curved in the sky. Just
for a second, the beautiful ball poised on the water.
The eastern sky was silver-blue behind the shining
sphere, and in the west, the brilliant crimson of the
afterglow faded into soft, deep red.
“I’ll never forget that.” Marjorie drew a long sigh. “I
wish Mother could see it!”
37
MARJORIE
Like an echo to her thought, her mother’s letter lay

on her bed when she reached the cottage. She read it
through—twice—and then went downstairs to find
Lucy.
Lucy was looking very sober, with a second letter
from Mrs. Jefferson in her hand.
“Lucy, Mother says she can’t come for me. She says
Father has to go to a warm climate—warmer even
than Florida. You don’t think I have to stay here, do
you, Lucy?” Marjorie fairly wailed.
“Your father is not nearly as well. He has to go to
the south of France. She can’t come and get you, and
she hopes we’ll keep you until they can get back to
America.”
“Stay here!” Marjorie cried. “Live on this island! All
winter? Not go to school! Not have any lessons! Not
have any fun! Well, I just won’t. You can write and tell
Mother I won’t stay!”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to write and tell your mother we
can’t keep you, Marjorie,” said Lucy, soberly.
Marjorie stared at her. It was one thing to take the
decision in her own hands and refuse to be left on the
island—it was quite another to be told that she was not
welcome.
“I don’t believe Dan will have you stay,” Lucy
continued.
“Dan won’t have me stay?” said Marjorie, puzzled.
38
“But Mother will pay for me.”

“Dan doesn’t need the money, and this is his house.
He doesn’t like the way you act, Marjorie.”
“Doesn’t like the way I act?” Marjorie had known all
summer that Dan had been quiet when she was around,
but she had been blind to the number of times Lucy
had softened the sharp remark he would have made.
“Well, we won’t talk about it now,” said Lucy. “I’ll
have to see Dan.”
“But if you won’t keep me, Lucy—what will I do?
Mother says I can’t go to that hospital place with
Father.”
“Boarding school, I suppose.”
But the idea of boarding school did not please
Marjorie.
Next afternoon, when she and Emma were playing
in the tide pools, she told Emma.
“And Lucy said,” she finished, “that perhaps Dan
wouldn’t want me to stay. Isn’t that funny, Emma?”
“Well, I know Dan cares about you, but you could
try being a little more helpful and kind. Dan doesn’t
think you’re nice to Lucy.” Emma was willing to try to
help her friend.
“Doesn’t think I’m nice to Lucy? I am nice to Lucy.
She was my nurse! What do I do?”
“You let her make your bed and wait on you, and
you don’t help with the housework—”
39
MARJORIE
“Help with the work? Why should I? Mother pays

my board.”
“That doesn’t give Lucy more time. Last year Mary
was here, and she helped Lucy; and this year Lucy has
more to do, and Dan doesn’t like it.”
“I can’t do all the things Lucy has to do.”
“You could do some of them. You could make your
own bed, and sweep your floor, and wipe the dishes,
and set the table and clear it off.”
“I do pick flowers for the house.”
“Yes, but you don’t change the water or cut their
stems.”
“I made some cookies yesterday.”
“But you didn’t wash the pan and bowls after you
got through.”
“Good gracious! I certainly don’t want to stay if
I’ve got to do all those things. I’d rather go away to
school.”
“Well, I wouldn’t.” Emma was firm about that. “I’d
rather help my mother and stay right here. You’ve no
idea how much fun we have in the winter—sleds and
skating on the ice pond and long tramps in the snow;
and the woods are beautiful. The days aren’t long
enough.”
“I shouldn’t think they would be, if I have to do
housework,” pouted Marjorie.
“For goodness’ sake!” Emma lost her patience at
40
last. “You sound as though you had to take care of the

whole house, all by yourself. How long do you suppose
it takes to make a bed and wash dishes? I do. I’ve done
that every single day since you came, and we’ve had
plenty of time together. If you helped Lucy, she’d have
more time to play with us, and Lucy likes to do things
as much as we do.”
But it didn’t seem to matter whether Marjorie
wanted to stay or not. When she went home, she
found Dan there, looking stern.
“Dan has read your mother’s letter.” Lucy believed in
getting disagreeable things over with. “And he thinks
it wouldn’t be sensible for you to stay here this winter.
He thinks you’d be better off at some school.”
Marjorie burst into a flood of tears. “I don’t want
to go to a strange school,” she sobbed. “I think you’re
cruel to send me away from you. Mother and Father
are far away, and you’re all I’ve got.”
“This sounds like a new story to me,” said Dan. “All
I’ve heard this summer was how much better things
were in Ohio and what you thought about the island
and the island people.”
“I never meant to say things in Ohio were better,”
sobbed Marjorie from the shelter of Lucy’s arms, “only
that they were different.”
“Sit up,” Dan ordered, and Marjorie tried to obey
him.
41
MARJORIE
“Lucy wants to keep you,” he said, “but you make

her too much work.”
“I won’t anymore,” promised Marjorie. “I’ll take care
of my own room and help with things down here, too,
and if she’ll teach me to cook, I’ll get the meals.”
A quiver of a smile showed around Dan’s mouth as
he thought of Marjorie’s cooking.
“I’ll think it over,” he agreed, as he left the table.
The next days were anxious ones for the Barter
cottage. Marjorie slipped in and out of the kitchen. If
Dan was there when she came in, he left as soon as he
could, and that worried Lucy, who felt as though her
husband were being driven out of his own house. And
she recognized another responsibility. If Marjorie were
to go to school, the place must be chosen, and Lucy
would have to get her ready.
Marjorie, worried and unhappy, turned to Emma
for comfort. They were over on the top of Whitehead
one afternoon, watching the shadows rise and fall on
the water of the ocean that stretched below them. A
chilly wind came up, and Emma shivered.
“We’d better go home—it’s getting cold. The
summer’s most over, and hasn’t it gone quickly?”
“Lucy does want you.” Emma tried to comfort her.
“It’s only Dan—and, Marjorie, you could make him
like you if you wanted to.”
Marjorie knew that she was not trying very hard
42
to please Dan, who was, though she did not know it,
waiting for a second letter from her mother.
“Anyway, I make my own bed.”
“Marjorie Jefferson, how can you talk like that! Just
pulling up the covers in the morning! Do you call that
making a bed? You pull off everything, even the sheets,
and flap them; you’ve seen Lucy do it dozens of times.
You don’t even carry down an empty plate from your
room. And you probably don’t know it, but you speak
to her sharp. You say: ‘Tie my bow. Get me a glass of
milk.’”
“I don’t,” said Marjorie. “I say ‘please.’”
“Sometimes you do, but usually you don’t, and how
about tying your own bow and getting your own glass
of milk—yes, and washing the glass afterward?”
Marjorie sat silent so long that loving little Emma
was troubled.
“Don’t feel badly, Marjorie, I want you to stay. We
have such good times in the winter. My mother says
you just don’t understand how Dan feels.”
Marjorie opened her mouth to answer but was
stopped by Matt, who was springing from rock to rock
below them. He saw the girls above him, waved, and
scrambled up the side of the cliff.
“Have you seen any mackerel?” he asked. “The boats
are out.”
“Mackerel?” Marjorie looked about her as if she
43
MARJORIE
expected to see them in the air. “I thought mackerel

were fish.”
“So they are.” Matt was too polite to laugh at her.
“They swim in schools, and men catch them with nets.
See that boat out there with a cross over the mast? A
man stands there and looks over the sea, and when
they see a school of mackerel, they go and catch it in a
net.”
“How do they catch them in a net? I should think
one fish would fill it.”
“Would fill a net?” Matt was puzzled, and then he
realized what Marjorie meant. “Not a butterfly net. It’s
a great big one—big enough to go all around a fishing
boat—twenty yards. They go as fast as they can around
the school and drop this net around them and then
pull the bottom closed with a rope through rings. Last
night the men had a fine catch, and the rope broke and
they lost them all. It’s exciting to find a school—look,
there’s one now.”
“Where! Where!” cried Marjorie, but Matt was on
his feet trying to get the attention of the fishing boats,
which were so far away that the men looked like black
sticks.
“Give me something to wave,” he said, stamping
with impatience. “They can’t hear me.” Emma pulled
off her sweater and stood shivering in the cold wind
while Matt waved frantically.
44
“I don’t see any mackerel.” Marjorie tried to button

her own sweater round Emma too.
Emma pointed to a ripple on the water. “That’s the
school,” she said.
“That! Why that’s nothing but the wind blowing—
that’s not fish.”
“The fins cut the water just above the surface, and
when the fish crowd each other, their tails flip,” said
Emma. “No use waving, Matt, the boats are too far
away. By the time they got here, the school would be
gone.”
Matt was used to the ways of the sea. He handed
back her sweater and joined the girls as they turned
back toward the village.
“I wish I could see mackerel schools,” said Marjorie
as they came into the open road. “Maybe if I could
find a school for Dan he’d think I was of some use.”
“Anybody can see fish,” said the boy. “I’ll teach you.”
There was a letter for Marjorie on the afternoon
mail. Marjorie choked while she was reading it. She
was too proud to let Dan see that she was crying, but
the big tears rolled over her cheeks before she could
wipe them away.
Dan was stubborn, and it was hard for him to give
in, but those tears settled it.
“Stop crying, Marjorie,” he said. “You can stay. I’ve
decided.”
45
MARJORIE
Marjorie looked at him and felt a big load roll off

her heart. She flew into Lucy’s arms and buried her
face on her shoulder.
“Come, come! Stop crying,” said the loving woman,
“or Dan will think you don’t want to stay. And now, we
have to make a list of things you need. Your mother
says you’ve outgrown everything and would have to
have new clothes, anyway. But they won’t be the same
sort of thing you’d have taken to school.”
Marjorie got off her lap and went over to Dan.
“I’m glad you’re going to let me stay,” she said. “I’ll
try to help with everything. Matt is going to show me
how to find schools of mackerel, so I can tell you.”
“Going to help me, are you?” he said, and his voice
was kind. “Soon as you learn to take a fish off a hook,
you can come out and catch pollock for lobster bait.”
“Fish off a hook!” Marjorie set her teeth, but she
was going to be a good sport. “I will. Matt will show
me how, and you shall have every fish I catch.”
Dan looked across at his wife’s happy face.
“Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “Maybe I’ve got a
helper instead of you. Better put overalls and oilskins
on that order for clothes. She can’t go fishing in silk
dresses!”
46
CHAPTER 5
School Begins for Marjorie
The summer was really over. All the summer

cottages were closed, and school had settled down
into the daily lessons. Lucy, looking out of the kitchen
window, saw the girls coming slowly up the road. They
were talking quietly. Something must have happened.
Usually they couldn’t wait to get home to begin some
of their various projects.
“Oh, Lucy,” Marjorie began as she opened the door.
“We’ve got some new pupils in school, and they don’t
look nice.”
“The big boy, Jock, is just horrid,” Emma said. “He
sits behind me, and he pulled my hair.”
“That’ll be the new family that has moved over from
the mainland,” Lucy said. “They’re going to live in that
place under Whitehead.”
47
MARJORIE
“That old shack? Why, it’s all tumbling down.”

“I know it. How many children were there?”
“Three—counting Jock.”
“And a lot more at home, I suppose. Well, we’ll
have to make the best of it. How they’re going to live
through the winter, I don’t see.”
“Matt said that Jock expected to fish, but none of
the men want him. His father is going fishing.”
“All those children! How can they live there?”
“Dan says that the father got the place by promising
to build on a room and fix up the building.”
“Come on, Emma.” Marjorie had not taken off
her coat. “We can see that camp from the top of
Whitehead. Let’s go over and find out who’s there.”
Emma objected, but Marjorie coaxed her, and in a
few moments the two girls were on top of Whitehead,
looking curiously at the old cabin in the hollow. A thin
line of smoke was trickling out of the stone chimney.
“Spying! Ain’t you? I’ll fix you! I hate spies!”
Jock, sullen, shaggy-haired, had come up behind
the girls so quietly that they had not heard him. Emma
shrank back and did not answer, but Marjorie’s temper
flared.
“We are not spying.” She forgot that that was just
what they had come to do. “This isn’t your island. We
have a right here.”
“I guess I’ll teach you to keep away from this side.
48
Me and my folks are going to live here now. We don’t

want anybody like you around.”
The glint of the sun on Emma’s curls caught his eye.
“I’ll begin by pulling your hair. That’ll make it grow.
You ought to know better than to wear it like that.”
A big clump of burdock was growing in the
sheltered crevice of a rock, its top thick with brown
burrs. With a swift movement, the boy caught
a handful and slapped them into Emma’s hair,
tightening and tangling the curls around them. It was
over so quickly that the girls did not realize what he
had done.
“Oh, you horrid boy!” cried Marjorie. “What a
hateful thing to do. You let Emma go, or I’ll—I’ll—”
She flew at him, but her little fists made no more
impression on him than the scratching of a kitten. She
could only keep him from making a further wreck of
Emma’s hair until Emma wrenched herself away.
“I’ll teach you to get in my way,” Jock snarled and
pushed Marjorie hard. She staggered, but her anger
was so great that she did not feel the pain.
“You—you coward!” she taunted. “Only cowards
push girls.”
“I’ll push you again,” he threatened, advancing on
her. Marjorie retreated.
“Oh, come home, Marjorie—you’re near the edge of
the cliff—be careful,” Emma begged.
49
MARJORIE
Marjorie looked over her shoulder, and the boy

caught her by the arm and pulled her past him.
“You ain’t got sense enough to be around rocks,” he
said. “I guess I’ll put burdocks in your hair.”
The girls were helpless. Emma could have run
away, but she would not desert Marjorie, who was not
sure-footed over the rocky hillside. But Marjorie was
not frightened; she was too angry.
“You wait till Dan gets hold of you. He’ll teach you
how to act.”
“So you’re the girl that’s come to live with Dan
Barter. Now you look here. If you tell one word about
me, I’ll fix you. Burdocks ain’t a thing to what I’ll do
to you. I know plenty of tricks, and I’ll use them, but
if you don’t tell Dan, maybe I’ll let you alone. I ain’t
afraid of Dan, but I don’t want to be stopped with
some plans I’ve got. Come on, now—will you tell?”
“Oh, say you won’t tell on him, and let us go
home,” said Emma. “Let us go, Jock Sperry. I won’t tell
anybody.”
“Well, I will,” said Marjorie. “Somebody ought to be
told about you. You can’t scare me, Jock Sperry.”
“Good for you, Marjorie!” It was a new voice. Matt
had come up from the opposite side of the hill. “You
big bully—fighting girls! Go on home, girls; he won’t
stop you.”
“I will if I want to,” growled Jock, who had met Matt
50
before and knew him to be a boy who meant what he

said.
“Oh, Matt,” cried Marjorie, “he pushed me—hard—
and look what he did to Emma!”
Matt cast one glance at Emma’s tear-stained face
and the tangle of burdocks in her hair. “Just for that,”
he said, and gave Jock a good hard blow. Jock struck
back, but Matt was so much lighter on his feet that he
dodged the blows even on the uneven ground.
“You can quit that,” he said to Jock, after the girls
were started on the trail toward home. “I won’t fight
with you—not now, anyway.”
“They wouldn’t have gotten into trouble if they’d
stayed where they belonged,” grumbled Jock.
“This isn’t your land,” called back Marjorie with
spirit.
“Don’t talk to him—don’t!” sobbed Emma, the tears
running down her cheeks. “Hurry. Let’s get away.”
Matt came running after them as they went through
the woods.
“Anyway, I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell,” said Marjorie.
“How would you have explained your hair?”
“Mother’ll have to cut it all off,” said Emma, “and
won’t she be cross!”
“It shan’t be cut.” Marjorie was decided. “Every time
Jock looked at you, he’d remember that he made you
cut your hair. Lucy and I can get the burrs out. It’ll
51
MARJORIE
take forever, but I’m willing. I wouldn’t let that horrid

boy have that much satisfaction.”
It was a good thing that the next day was Saturday,
for the burrs were only half out by bedtime. Marjorie
worked patiently. Lucy had tried to help, but it made
her nervous. But as fast as a little lick of hair was free,
Marjorie rolled it up on a paper twist, and Emma went
to bed to sleep on her face so that the remaining burrs
would not get more tangled.
“This is something I’ll never forget of you, Marjorie,”
she said the next morning, as she sat in Lucy’s kitchen.
“I’d just hate having Jock make fun of me.”
“I’ll settle with that young roughneck,” said Dan
coming into the kitchen and looking at the pile of
burrs on the table and the white bumps on Emma’s
head. “I’ll teach him to leave girls alone.”
“Oh, Dan, don’t say anything,” begged Emma, but
Marjorie had more courage.
“I wish you’d give it to him. He’ll just worry the life
out of us. We won’t dare go out of our own yard.”
She gave a last tug, and Emma’s hair was free from
the burrs. “Now I’ll take the papers down, and you can
brush your hair into its own curls. I hope I’m along
when Jock sees you.”
Monday morning at school, Matt came to meet
them. Emma’s hair had never been prettier.
“Jock’s told everybody how he made you cut your
52
hair into a bob,” he said gleefully. “Won’t he be mad!”

Gentle Emma shrank from meeting her tormentor,
but Marjorie pulled her along.
“He won’t dare touch us, and whatever he says won’t
make any difference. Dan can deal with him.”
Jock was sitting on the rocks by the schoolhouse
waiting for the girls. His eyes opened in astonishment
as he saw Emma’s long curls.
“Thought you were smart, didn’t you?” asked
Marjorie.
All that Jock could say was, “I’ll get even with you—
you just wait.”
To her great annoyance, Jock chose to sit at the
desk behind her. He liked teasing a girl whose temper
could be aroused, and he thought of many things
to do. He kicked the desk, not often, but enough to
keep Marjorie expecting a shake. He studied in an
undertone—not loud enough to be heard by the
teacher—and he muttered threats under his breath.
He shook his pen, not directly at Marjorie, but near
enough so that she expected to be spotted with ink.
“I told you he was terrible,” said Emma after two or
three days.
“I’m just not going to school, if he stays,” scolded
Marjorie at the luncheon table. She expected Dan and
Lucy to sympathize with her, but though Dan looked
sober, he listened to her in silence.
53
MARJORIE
“Come, come, Marjorie, there’s no use spoiling our

lunch,” Lucy objected at last. “Eat your food and talk
about something else besides Jock.”
“I’m not going back to school, then.” Marjorie
cast a side glance at Dan, not sure how he would feel
about that.
“Of course you’re going back,” said Lucy. “What do
you think Jock would say about your staying away?
You wouldn’t let him crow over Emma—are you going
to give him a chance to crow over you?”
That was a new idea to Marjorie. She went back. But
Jock was not content with teasing her—he was such a
problem that the teacher put him at a table by himself,
and lessons were easier.
But not too easy for Marjorie. She found that Matt
and Emma, accustomed to studying in a one-room
school, knew more and had better marks than she did.
“Let me help you with your arithmetic,” suggested
Dan one night, as Marjorie sat at the kitchen table one
evening.
“I just hate this stuff!”
“I don’t wonder. We didn’t have our work in tablet
form, but I guess arithmetic hasn’t changed much. I
don’t wonder you can’t come out right when you make
your figures so poorly, and you can’t add columns
unless they are straight.”
But Marjorie made a poor showing. She couldn’t
54
do mental arithmetic without counting on her fingers,

and at last Dan shook his head.
“It’s no use working seventh-grade problems if you
can’t do third-grade arithmetic.” Dan took down a box
from the shelf.
“Those old dominoes!” exclaimed Lucy.
“They’re good drill. I learned my numbers from
them.”
Dan shook the blocks of wood on the table.
Marjorie picked up one and looked at it. They were
unlike any dominoes she had ever seen. Whittled out
of wood, each domino had numbers instead of spots
on the face.
Dan lined up a dozen blocks on the table in front of
him. He laid one down. “Four and two—what does it
make?”
“Six,” said Marjorie.
“Now see how fast you can add these numbers as I
put them down.”
When the twelve dominoes were all lying face up,
Marjorie was a little ashamed of her record. Especially
was she when Emma snapped out the answers as fast
as she could see the new numbers.
But in a week, Marjorie could keep up with Emma.
The blocks never fell twice alike, so she got plenty of
drill. She could subtract the smaller number from the
larger, add both sides and subtract that from a given
55
MARJORIE
larger number, and keep up with Dan when he devised

new ways to meet the problem.
He was patient, though he shook his head over a
school that would leave a girl so ignorant after six
years.
“We didn’t have much time for arithmetic,”
confessed Marjorie. “But we did beautiful artwork—
and we had lots of fun in gym.”
There was no artwork in Dan’s coaching, and
Marjorie found out that she liked using her brain
around the table at night.
With the fall days came new pleasures. Emma and
Marjorie spent the autumn afternoons in the meadow
picking cranberries—great red and green things
that looked twice as big as those the mainland stores
carried. They were such a luxury that the island people
sent big bags of them to their friends on shore. Lucy
canned jars full, and Marjorie ground up apples and
oranges and cranberries together and covered them
with sugar to make a relish much enjoyed when the
winter came.
“Dan says he used to pick these for his mother.”
Marjorie bit into one, but found it too sour for
pleasure. “He was telling me last night about the sheep
and the lambs that used to be on the island. I wish
they were here now. They’d be so pretty.”
“But they were an awful nuisance. The gardens all
56
had to be fenced from them. There are still sheep on

those islands between here and Port Clyde. They have
been there all these years.”
“What does wool look like?” Marjorie wanted to
know.
“Lucy has a big bag of it, in the attic. She said she
was going to stuff a quilt. She’ll show it to you.”
The three climbed the narrow attic stairs, where the
possessions of several generations of Dan’s family were
tucked away under the sloping eaves. Dry and dusty
herbs crumbled to powder when they were touched.
An old cradle rocked under Emma’s gentle fingers, and
the bag of wool, dusty from its place far back behind
the old chests, was pulled out.
“My goodness, what dirty stuff!” Marjorie looked at
the handful Lucy handed her in disgust. “It looks like
the waste they clean automobiles with, only this has
burrs and sticks in it. I don’t see how anybody makes
cloth out of this.”
“They don’t. It has to be washed and carded and
made into rolls and then spun. There’s a spinning
wheel over there, but I don’t know how to use it.” Lucy
gave the wheel a turn.
“I never saw a spinning wheel!” cried Marjorie.
“This one belonged to Dan’s grandmother. I guess
it’s been in the attic ever since she died. It seems to
work all right.”
57
MARJORIE
“Do you suppose Dan would let me use it?”

“I don’t see why not—only I can’t show you how.”
Dan’s voice sounded from below, and he joined the
others in the attic. He was quite willing to let Marjorie
try the wheel and carried it down to a place in front of
the living room fireplace, where it looked very much at
home.
“I know who could show you how,” he said, when
Marjorie had dusted it thoroughly and slipped the old
strings over the big and little wheel. “Aunt Melvina.”
“Of course she could,” cried Lucy. “She spins all
winter.”
And to Aunt Melvina’s cottage Marjorie and Emma
ran. It was a little weatherbeaten one, smothered
in rose vines and bordered with the stalks of dead
hollyhocks. On the way, Emma told Marjorie:
“She’s lived here for years and years—she grows
herbs in her garden and picks up snails and seashells.”
On the road they met Jock, who demanded:
“Where are you going?”
Emma was silent, but Marjorie would not give him
any satisfaction. “We’re going to Aunt Melvina’s.”
“You’d better not,” warned Jock. “She’s strange!”
“She wouldn’t hurt me,” said Marjorie with spirit. “If
you are nice to people, they’ll be nice to you.”
At the gate of the little house, she stopped a
moment.
58
The windows looked out of squares cut away from

the rose vines. The mosquito netting tacked over the
door had rotted in the salt-laden air and was pulling
away from its frame. On a wide step in front of the
door, a rope mat had been coiled, worn by many feet
and frayed ends.
“It’s like a house in a storybook.” Marjorie
remembered the illustrations in her favorite book.
“I wouldn’t want to live in a storybook,” Emma said.
“I’d be afraid.”
“Well, this isn’t a storybook. Aunt Melvina just lives
alone and does her own work and picks up seaweed
and periwinkles for food.” Marjorie knocked on the
old door that sagged at its frame, and a soft voice said,
“Come in.”
59
CHAPTER 6
Aunt Melvina’s Cottage
The door swung inward in a room so like a story

that Marjorie never forgot her first sight of it.
Great square beams in the ceiling brought it so low
that the girl could have reached it by lifting her hand.
Blossoming geraniums nodded through three shining
panes of glass to the few petunias that still flowered in
the garden outside, and beyond them lay the harbor.
A great fireplace on one side had been closed, and a
polished stove stood on the granite hearth. A pantry
door stood open, and here hung bunches of fresh
herbs whose pungent leaves scented the air. Marjorie,
city girl that she was, recognized some of them—
mullein, bay, fir tips, and rose haws.
Emma, who was at home in Aunt Melvina’s cottage,
pushed one of the little three-legged stools beside the
60
fireplace to Marjorie and sat down on the other.

“We would have come to see you before, Aunt
Melvina,” she said, “but we have been so busy. And
now Marjorie—this is Marjorie Jefferson who lives
with Lucy and Dan—wants to ask you something.”
“Could you teach me to spin, Aunt Melvina?”
the girl from Ohio asked. “We have brought Dan’s
grandmother’s wheel down from the attic, and we have
some of Lucy’s wool. Which is the spindle?”
“This little rod that turns the wheel.” Aunt Melvina
showed both the girls. “Come here—and take the wool
in your hands like this.”
The little old woman, so tiny that both girls were
larger than she, held Marjorie’s hand and guided it as
the wheel turned and the white strand twisted into a
thread. It was a clumsy, uneven thread, and nothing
could have been done with it, but when after half an
hour Marjorie had spun a couple of yards of it, she
was a very proud little girl. It took several trips back
to Aunt Melvina’s cottage before she really mastered
the trick, and the old woman had to come up and
adjust the wheel in Lucy’s living room, but before the
first snow fell, Marjorie was spinning like an expert
and winding her two threads into a ball that anybody
could knit with.
“I want to make some stockings,” she said.
“That I can teach you,” said Lucy. “You’d be pretty
61
MARJORIE
proud of stockings you spun and knit yourself,

wouldn’t you?”
But they did not begin with handspun wool. Lucy
bought her some stocking yarn and four steel needles,
and Marjorie found that she liked knitting almost as
much as she did the whir of the wheel. She had the
needles and wool in her hands when she and Emma
went over to Whitehead one warm afternoon.
“I used to love to sit here in the long grass and watch
the ocean,” said Emma, as they settled themselves with
their backs against a rock. “But now I’m afraid of Jock.”
“Jock won’t—” began Marjorie, but her sentence
was stopped by a voice.
“Jock will. What are you doing here? I told you to
keep away from this side of the island.”
He grabbed the ball of yarn from Marjorie’s lap
and began to toss it. One of Marjorie’s needles pulled
away from the knitting, and the whole thing began to
unravel.
“Jock, you bad boy. Stop that! You’ve spoiled my
whole stocking!”
For answer, Jock broke the yarn and began to toss
the ball higher and higher. There was danger of it
falling over the cliff-head on the rocks below.
“Jock!—you—”
A little old figure, so brown and weather-worn that
she might have come out of the rocks themselves,
62
appeared at Marjorie’s elbow. It was Aunt Melvina.

Both girls had become friends with her, since the
spinning had been a bond between them.
“Aunt Melvina, Jock’s ruined my knitting and taken
my yarn.” Marjorie held out the raveled work.
Jock looked at the little figure uneasily. He had taken
good care to keep away from her. The tales told about
her by the fishermen had made him wonder. He tossed
the ball back into Marjorie’s lap but did not go away.
“So this is Jock,” said Aunt Melvina’s sweet, low
voice. “Jock is new to me. Where do you live?”
Jock screwed up his nose but made no answer.
“He’s the meanest boy that ever lived,” scolded
Marjorie. “He lives down there in that old shack, and
he doesn’t do anything but tease us. He’s a perfectly
horrid boy, Aunt Melvina.”
Aunt Melvina said nothing for a full minute. Her
eyes went from sullen Jock to angry Marjorie, and
beyond them to fearful Emma, who had started for
home but was waiting to see what might happen.
Marjorie expected Jock to defend himself, but the boy
did not speak.
Aunt Melvina’s words were unexpected. “I have
some sticks of sweet gum in my pocket,” she said.
She broke a twig in two and handed one half to
Marjorie and the other to Jock. A second stick she
shared with Emma, who had come back to get her
63
MARJORIE
piece. Then she held out her hands for Marjorie’s

knitting and began to repair the damage. Marjorie
followed her gesture of dropping down in the long
grass, and Emma sat down too, casting fearful glances
at Jock. Jock stood chewing his twig. For the first time,
the look of defiance left his face, and after a second,
he perched himself on one of the rocks. Aunt Melvina
was comfortably chewing her twig, and Marjorie bit
into the end of hers. It tasted something like licorice,
with a slightly bitter and still sweet, strong flavor.
“We never had chewing gum when I was a girl,” said
Aunt Melvina, as her knitting needles flashed in the
sunshine. “We used to have caramel candy on sticks
like these. You can chew slippery elm almost as long as
gum.”
Jock nodded. “I know how to peel that,” he said. “A
man showed me. You take off the outside bark.”
Aunt Melvina nodded. “I’ve got some in my cottage,”
she said. “If you come there, I’ll give you a piece.”
She lifted a heavy white bag beside her.
“I’ve been gathering spruce all the afternoon.”
“Is that for gum?” Marjorie asked.
“No, I powder it and mix it for medicine.”
“I could dig gum off the trees for you,” Jock offered.
“I know where there’s lots. I could climb trees where
you couldn’t go.”
“That would be fine,” said Aunt Melvina. There was
64
no difference in her tone. She was actually treating

Jock like anybody else. And under her friendly chat,
Jock relaxed and became like another boy. He and
Aunt Melvina talked on and on about the water, about
different kinds of seaweed, about the way the gulls ride
the wind currents. Emma and Marjorie were left out of
the conversation, but they sat quietly, waiting for Aunt
Melvina to finish reknitting the stocking. When at last
Jock was out of sight and hearing, Marjorie began to
express her opinion of Jock, but Aunt Melvina was not
a good listener.
“He teases us so,” said Marjorie. “You can’t imagine
how he teases us.”
“You tease him,” said the little old woman.
“Why, Aunt Melvina, we don’t. We don’t like him. We
let him alone. We wish we never had to see him again.”
“And don’t you suppose that teases him?” she asked.
“What is teasing?”
“I—I suppose it’s being annoying.”
“And don’t you suppose it annoys Jock to have two
little girls act as though he weren’t alive? You wouldn’t
like to be snubbed like that. Poor Jock has to prove to
you that he is alive!”
“Poor Jock!” began Marjorie with a sniff, but gentle
little Emma put her hand in Marjorie’s.
“I think Aunt Melvina’s right,” she said surprisingly.
“I think he is ‘poor Jock.’”
65
MARJORIE
Poor Jock or not, he let the girls alone for some time.
And though the calendar said that it was November,
and Thanksgiving was coming nearer, the garden
outside was still brilliant with the burnt orange and
copper and gold of the calendulas, and the gardens
planted by the summer cottagers were still blooming
as brightly in sheltered places as though their owners
were not miles away in their winter homes.
Marjorie came in one day with a great bunch of
marigolds and a handful of late roses that she had cut
from a garden, back from the shore.
“Look, Lucy! Roses from out-of-doors! Of course
the foliage is burned and windblown at the edge, but it
really tones in with the copper of the flowers,” she said,
putting them in a green bowl in the center of the table.
“I can’t believe that it is really so near Thanksgiving.
At home it has begun to snow. When does it freeze the
flowers here?”
“Not much before Christmas,” Lucy answered.
“No skating before Christmas!” Marjorie was
amazed. “I thought winter in Maine meant sliding and
skating and snowshoeing all fall, and you say it won’t
even freeze till nearly Christmas. And Emma says they
have to carry snow when they want to slide.”
“That’s because the wind blows it all off the hills and
roads. You’ll have enough of winter before it’s over.”
“Mother’s sending us a box for Thanksgiving. It’s
66
just as though I were away at school.”

When the box did come, it filled the kitchen with
goodies—candies, jams, cakes, fruit—everything
a mother lonesome for her little girl could think
of to order from the biggest store in Boston. And
when Marjorie and Emma went down the road
Thanksgiving morning, carrying a basket with some of
the delicacies for Aunt Melvina, Lucy looked at them
with admiration.
“They’re pretty as a picture,” she said to Dan, who
was shelling popcorn to make some corn balls, for
which he was famous. “Nobody would ever take
Marjorie for a delicate child now.”
“She’s well enough,” said Dan.
And at Aunt Melvina’s door, two joyous children
were shouting.
“Let us in! It’s Thanksgiving!”
“Is it?” Aunt Melvina was pleased to see her two
young callers.
“Don’t you know it is? Where’s your calendar?”
“My calendar? In the sky and sea, and the songs of
migrating birds, and the seed pods of wildflowers. Do
you think I need a piece of paper on the wall to tell me
it’s winter?”
“No, but you need a piece of paper on the wall to tell
you it’s Thanksgiving. Or even Sunday!”
“The church bell will do that.” Emma would never
67
MARJORIE
have dared to treat Aunt Melvina so casually. Like the

rest of the island people, Emma was awed by the little
old woman. She would never have dared risk offending
her. But Aunt Melvina was not offended by Marjorie.
“I can manage to keep a holiday, now and then.
What is this toy you have brought to show me?”
“It’s part of our basket from my mother. We thought
you would like to share what Lucy calls ‘goodies.’”
“And so I do.” She accepted the gift and put it on the
old chest of drawers that stood on one wall.
“Look! I’m wearing the stockings I knit.” Marjorie
proudly showed her firm little legs well covered with
the home-knit wool. “Lucy had to show me about the
foot, but I’ll do better next time. If you hadn’t helped
me with Jock, I wouldn’t have had my yarn.”
“And how is Jock behaving?” Aunt Melvina wanted
to know. The two girls looked at each other. When
Jock was not annoying them, they never stopped to
think whether he was behaving or not.
68
CHAPTER 7
Trap Day
“You’ll want to be up early tomorrow,” said Lucy, on

the last day of November.
“What are we getting up any earlier for? We get up
at sunrise now.”
“You’ll be on the beach tomorrow at sunrise, with
breakfast behind you. It’s trap day.”
“I know it’s trap day! Goodness! The fish beach has
been full of lobster traps for weeks, and the boats in
the harbor are all piled with lobster traps. All you hear
talked about is lobster traps. But why do we have to get
up so early?”
“We don’t,” said Dan. “Years ago the men used to get
out as soon as midnight came, to get the best locations,
but we don’t do it anymore. There’s room enough for
everybody. Anyway, while one man is getting off one
69
MARJORIE
lot of traps, the next one can go to another good place.

It wasn’t worthwhile fussing so. You and Marjorie
better come down to the fish beach. I can use a couple
of husky workers.”
“Workers! I couldn’t move a lobster trap. I’ve tried.
They’ve got too much cement in them.”
“How do you suppose they’d sink, if they weren’t
weighted? But if you can’t swing traps, you can bait
’em. That doesn’t take much muscle.”
“Bait traps! Pick up those horrid pieces of fish out of
that dirty, smelly brine? I guess not!”
“We’ll leave that to the men, Marjorie,” said Lucy.
“I guess they’ll have enough hands to get their
traps out.” The men had been making traps all fall.
Marjorie had seen them coming from the woods with
loads of spruce boughs to be bent into circles to hold
the pot heads. She had nailed the slats on one end of
a new trap while Dan fastened the other. She could
almost have made a trap by herself. Now these traps
were piled in long lines near the water. As she and
Lucy reached the fish beach, she saw the men loading
them on the skiffs and punts. Even the small boys
helped, dragging one at a time to the water’s edge
when they were too heavy to lift. They were rowed out
to the bigger boats, where the lobster buoys and the
bottle floats and the long lines of rope were waiting
for them.
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Trap Day
“Do they tie the lobster buoys on before they sink

them?” Marjorie asked.
“Yes, that has to be done only once a season,” Lucy
answered. “That is, if things go well. But if a storm
comes, it drifts the pots together and twists one rope
around another until they’re in a worse tangle than a
dozen balls of yarn.”
“Then what happens?”
“All the men go out together in big boats and bring
in all the tangles of traps they can find. They land
them on the dock, and everybody on the island goes
down and untwists and coils the ropes and helps mend
the traps, if they’re not broken too badly.”
Marjorie looked at the sky, bright blue with little
white clouds. “It doesn’t look as though there would
ever be storms bad enough to do that.”
“I’m afraid you’ll see plenty.” Lucy looked at the sky
in turn. “But we’ll hope the traps come through safely.”
School had hardly settled down after the excitement
of trap day when it began to be excited by the approach
of Christmas. Little groups of boys, groups of girls, and
boys and girls together gathered to discuss their hopes
of presents, and Marjorie began to understand how
differently these children lived.
There were no stores where they could buy their
gifts. Few of the children had money enough to
spend, if there had been a choice. The one gift shop
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MARJORIE
had the leftovers of the summer stock—articles that

every child had seen so often that their value was lost.
Purchases were made through the columns of the
mail order catalog, and every house had a well-worn
copy easily reached; but although the children made
long lists of what they would like to buy, nothing was
accomplished—except additional exercises of adding
and subtracting—for the money from the sale of the
lobsters from their own lobster pots all had to be used
for clothing.
Like the others, Marjorie wore heavy suits and
sweaters and pulled the caps Lucy knitted well
down over her ears when the cold sea wind struck
her as she left the cottage. The little entryway of the
schoolhouse had hooks—each with a child’s name
above it—and nobody ever put a wrap on another
hook. Even the tiny children knew where their coats
belonged.
There was no question of Christmas during the
school hours. Miss Potter had too much to do to allow
any talking. For the first few weeks, Marjorie was so
puzzled by the way the lessons were presented that
she did little studying herself, and it took a rather
stern lecture by her teacher to bring her to her senses.
She soon found that the island children were better
grounded in their work than she was, and her pride
was hurt. But with Dan’s help, she brought up her
72
Trap Day
arithmetic, and by the time December came, she was

doing almost as well as Emma and Matt.
From her seat in the schoolroom, she could look
out the window at Duck Rock, where the tripod stood,
and she soon knew the lines of every island boat as
well as the other children. When lessons were dull, she
wished she were on the prow of the lobster boats that
were going out to tend their traps. Sometimes they
pulled them out of the water where the children could
see the catch, and then not even Miss Potter could
make them keep their minds on their books until they
had counted the number of lobsters that were thrown
back, and those kept.
Some years before, the Community Club of
the island had built a stage onto the end of the
schoolhouse; there were curtains and a piano. Marjorie
had had piano lessons in Ohio, and though she could
play only simple things, none of the other children
could play at all, and Miss Potter allowed her to pick
out the school songs when the weather was too stormy
to let them spend their recess out-of-doors.
School began in the morning with a prayer and
Bible reading. Marjorie found that she really listened
to the words. She thought that they meant more on the
island. So much of the Bible seems to talk about the
sea and fishing. Then classes began, and there wasn’t
a quiet minute, except for recess and noon, and even
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MARJORIE
those hours were often filled with extra lessons for

some pupils.
Teaching eight grades in one room, with attention
to the preschool children besides, took planning, but
Miss Potter was equal to it. First, she set the older
children working on arithmetic, geography, and
English. She combined grades, often. Seventh and
eighth recited history together, and later, geography.
There was no child in the fifth, so that sixth sometimes
joined with seventh and sometimes with fourth. The
three lower grades had spelling—the odd-numbered
words for one grade, the even ones for the rest.
“It takes concentration,” said the city child to
Emma, who had recited and learned in the same
fashion all through her school years.
“I suppose it does; I never thought much about it.”
But when it came to current events, Jock could beat
everybody. The other children had radios in their
homes. Jock listened at the fish houses and heard the
men discuss local and national politics. He knew more
than Miss Potter did about many things, and Marjorie,
listening to him recite, thought, “He’d really be nice,
that boy, if he’d just behave.”
But Jock had no idea of behaving any more than to
avoid being sent away from school. Miss Potter tried
to use his energy. It was Jock who kept the fire going—
tossing the two-foot logs into the maw of the stove.
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Trap Day
Surrounded by a steel frame, it kept the schoolhouse

warm. The children were proud of that stove.
“The old one was awful,” Emma told Marjorie. “It
was just a stove like any stove, and if you sat near it,
you roasted, and if you sat back, you froze. We were
glad to see this new one come in, I can tell you!”
Outside, when the snow packed the hills, sleds were
stacked against the side of the house. The boys could
dash out, grab their own rope and, flinging themselves
on, slide clear across the meadow. There, by climbing
to the other side of the hill, they could slide almost all
the way back. And when the ice on the ice pond froze,
nearly all the children came to school with shoe-skates
on, and they did not take them off all day.
“You don’t recite with them on, do you?”
“Why, yes!” Emma was puzzled. “We always have. It
makes our ankles strong.”
“I shouldn’t think Miss Potter would like it.”
“She didn’t at first, but the children hadn’t any other
shoes to change into, and they couldn’t go home after
school to get their skates. Anyway, we always have
worn them ever since skates came on shoes.”
“Matt has given his shoe-skates to Billy.”
“Yes, all the children pass them on when they are
outgrown. Shoe-skates last a long time.”
“I’m going to write home to Ohio and tell the girls
about it, but I don’t think they’ll believe it.”
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MARJORIE
There were a great many things about her island life

that Marjorie found hard to explain. She did her best,
though, both in her letters to her mother and to her
friends at home. Their letters, when they came, were
full of their plans and parties, but Marjorie found that
she did not envy them nor miss her old activities.
76
CHAPTER 8
Christmas Preparations
After trap day comes Christmas. Marjorie had

expected to feel lonely and unhappy for this holiday,
but she soon found herself drawn into preparations so
elaborate that they took all the time that was free from
school and lessons.
Pies had to be baked and put in the cold closet
to keep. Lucy’s recipe for fruit cake was so popular
that the other women on the island used it for their
presents to send away, and Lucy herself baked loaf
after loaf for special friends.
When Marjorie realized that almost everybody on
the island gave everybody else a present, she saw how
much work was put into getting ready for the holiday,
for few presents were bought. Nearly everything was
made, so that every house on the island bubbled
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MARJORIE
over with Christmas preparations. Marjorie was

used to going to a store and buying her presents with
her pocket money. When she saw Emma begin to
contrive them out of scraps and bits of wool, she was
glad that among the books her mother had sent her
was one with suggestions for pretty simple things a
little girl could make. Emma found her advice very
useful.
“Does everybody give food?”
“Oh, no. Aunt Gertrude knits mittens or makes
school bags. She gives every child on the island the
same thing. She’s been knitting for weeks now.”
“I don’t suppose she’ll give me anything. I’m not an
island child.” Marjorie had always envied Emma her
bright, ribbed mittens.
“Oh yes, she will,” Emma assured her. “She wouldn’t
leave anybody out. Her daughter Katherine whittles
those little lobster buoys. She made all of us fish once.”
The afternoon of Christmas Eve, Lucy brought
out the big clothes basket and carefully packed her
presents in it.
“What is that for?” inquired Marjorie.
“Everybody sends their presents to the church.
The women are there now, trimming the trees. Bring
me yours—be sure that everything is labeled plainly
before you put it in. We’ll leave the basket up there—
we’ll need it tonight.”
78
“Need a clothes basket?” Marjorie was puzzled.

“You’ve been thinking about presents to give. What
about the ones we’ll get?” asked Lucy.
“Presents enough to fill a big clothes basket? On this
island?”
“You’ll see.”
Emma burst into the room.
“Come on! They’re bringing out the Christmas
trees—two of them—in the back of the truck. I wish
we’d been there when they cut them. They drag them
to the edge of the road, and then the truck takes them
the rest of the way.”
Down the road the truck was coming, slowly, so
as not to hurt the long limbs of the balsam that had
grown sky high for fifty years.
“What a beauty,” said Marjorie. “And two!”
“Just you wait,” said Emma.
It wasn’t long—just till after an early supper, which
everybody was too excited to eat. Lucy and Dan, with
Marjorie and Emma and her family behind them, went
down the island road toward the little church, whose
window blazed with light. As they entered, Emma
caught Marjorie’s hand and took her to the front pews
where the island children were all sitting together.
Nothing had prepared Marjorie for the sight of
that church. She had been in it often on Sunday in
summer, and had thought it was rather bare, but there
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MARJORIE
was nothing dull in the light and sparkle that met her
eyes. On each side of the room, hiding the old organ
on one side, were the two splendid trees whose high
tops brushed the ceiling. They were so covered with
gifts that no one could have told whether they were fir
or spruce. And under them were boxes of all shapes
and sizes—piles and piles of presents. The square
chancel beyond was filled with smaller trees cut off
by a lattice of silver tinsel. These trees were trimmed
with Christmas ornaments, bright colored balls and
tiny bells, tinsel pictures, and cornucopias. Festoons of
tinsel stretched from the hanging lamps in the center
to the side walls, where they were woven into elaborate
designs. But there was no trimming on the big trees
except the brightly wrapped presents themselves.
And such an array! Most of them were wrapped
in colored paper and tied with two colors of yarn.
Marjorie had seen how carefully Lucy and Emma
had decorated their gifts, but she did not realize how
festive the entire island collection would be.
“See those square-looking box things with the paper
poppy on each one? Those are Aunt Mary’s. She always
gives nice things. And that row that looks like flower
baskets, with the oilcloth flowers—those are Matt’s
mother’s. He saw her cutting out the flowers the other
day. They’re doorstops.”
The smaller children wriggled happily when the
80
branches of the great trees brushed their faces or

caught in their hair.
There were so many things to look at. Marjorie tried
not to miss one—the tiny little packages tied on to the
tips of the branches, heavier ones near the trunks, the
decorative dolls and colored cloth animals, the bright
handkerchiefs and pencils tied with gold cord, toy
sailboats whittled by the men for their favorite boys.
“Look at that doll,” whispered Emma. “She makes
me wish I weren’t too big for dolls.”
Marjorie’s eyes danced, for she knew whose name
was on the beautiful sled that was the envy of every
child in the room. To get an article as large as that on
the island without its being seen when it arrived on
the mail boat was a problem, but this one had been
hidden in Dan’s fish house, and nobody had seen it till
it arrived at the church door.
The program was soon over—first the little
children with their two-line recitations and the school
children’s part of the program—recitations and songs.
Then all the children, big and little, stood in line on
the low stage and sang “Jingle Bells.”
In came Santa Claus himself, carrying a big basket of
candy. He waved his hand as they hurried to their seats.
“Who is he?” Marjorie whispered to Emma, “I don’t
know anybody as fat as that on the island.”
“I don’t know,” Emma whispered back. “We always
81
MARJORIE
look around to see which of the men are missing, but I

can’t see. Dan and Dick and Carl—they’re usually the
ones—why, who is this?”
A second figure was coming down the aisle—a
lovely lady with long flaxen curls and a soft, flowing
gown. Her arms were ringed with bracelets; her neck
was heavy with strings of beads.
“It’s not a queen,” said Aunt Mary Robinson, who
was mistress of ceremony. “It’s Mrs. Santa Claus, come
to see you.”
Mrs. Santa took out from her bag tiny boxes, which
she handed to each child—blue for the boys, pink for
the girls. With hurried “thank yous,” they tore off the
wrappings and found inside rings, such as Mrs. Santa
was wearing, set with huge stones.
The city girl, who had seen plenty of ten-cent store
jewelry, was surprised at the pleasure shown by the
children. But when the distribution of presents began,
the rings were forgotten.
Marjorie’s name was called again and again, and
as the gifts piled up in her lap, she realized that the
clothes basket waiting in the entry was a good idea.
None of the children opened anything.
“Things would get lost,” said Emma philosophical-
ly. “When I was very little, I dropped a game, and the
counters spilled out. You don’t do that but once.”
The last package was the one from the “Sunbeam,”
82
the mission boat that serves the people of the fishing

villages and the islands of the coast. Every package was
so planned that one gift alone would make Christmas,
and did for many of the isolated children—books,
candy, toys, and wearing apparel.
“They give you good books,” said Emma. “I have
six. They never give duplicates in the same place, so we
can all read each other’s.”
At last the trees were bare. People began to gather
together their presents and outdoor wraps. Emma sat,
quite overcome by the big sled that rested against her
knee, and Lucy came down the aisle to help Marjorie
with her packages. Dan brought the big clothes basket,
already almost filled with the things for him and Lucy.
The full moon was shining over the snow as they
left the church—a moon so bright that it dimmed the
light that turned steadily in the lighthouse on the hill.
“We were going to open our presents tonight,” said
Lucy, “but it is late, and we all are tired. What do you
think, Dan? Shall we have our tree in the morning?”
Somehow they got themselves inside the cottage,
basket, bundles, and all, and in a moment or two,
Marjorie was asleep in bed—before she could
remember that the Christmas Eve she had expected
to be dull had been as exciting as any she had ever
known.
The next morning she heard voices in the kitchen
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MARJORIE
below her. Emma, who had her “home Christmas” the

night before, was eagerly calling.
“Marjorie! Get up! It’s Christmas!”
Marjorie dashed water on her face, jumped into her
clothes, and was downstairs, where the table was set
for a Christmas breakfast—a tiny tree in the center,
wrapped gifts at every plate, and—new dishes!
“They’re my present from Dan,” said Lucy happily.
“Your mother bought them for him—she knew what
I’d like.”
The rest would have dashed for the living room
door, but Lucy made them eat their cereal before she
would let them go. Then, after she had been alone for a
moment in the room, she opened the door.
The dozens of candles on the tree filled the room
with a soft light. Marjorie’s trees had always had
electricity. She had never dreamed how lovely the
light of wax tapers can be. The tree she and Emma had
trimmed was, for a moment, made into something
unexpected; it was as though Santa himself had
touched it.
“This is your tree, Marjorie,” said Lucy. “You must
give out the presents.”
As the candles began to burn so low that they had
to be put out, the room became a tangle of colored
paper, ribbons, seals, and packings. Boxes for Marjorie
had been arriving for the last weeks—sent from her
84
mother’s friends in Ohio who were sorry for the little

girl, lonely on a faraway island. Lucy had said there
were too many for one girl, and Marjorie, when the
presents were all put together, was inclined to agree
with her.
“Lots of people don’t even remember how old I
am—these things are for little children. Lucy, I don’t
want all this under the tree when the others come to
see it. Let’s put away a lot of them—we can give them
to other children later. Leave out the island presents,
and Mother’s and yours. I’ll make a list and write
‘thank you’ letters, but they had better go up in the
spare room for now.”
Dan went down to his boat to set up the lights for
his fishing boat—his present from the Jeffersons. Lucy
was busy in the kitchen. Emma and Marjorie were
looking at her presents.
“It’s a wonderful Christmas, even if Mother and
Father aren’t here,” said Marjorie. “It’s so much nicer
than I thought it would be. Last night at the church
was just what a Christmas tree ought to be, I think.
What are you looking so sober about, Emma? Did you
want something you didn’t get?”
“Mercy, no!” said Emma. “I would be awfully
ungrateful when you and your mother have given me
so many things I didn’t expect. Just my sled would
have been enough.”
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MARJORIE
“Then what is the matter?”

“I suppose I’m silly, but I keep thinking about Jock.”
“Jock!” Marjorie looked at Emma in surprise. “What
about Jock?”
“He didn’t get anything at the tree last night.”
“Didn’t get anything? He wasn’t there!”
“Yes, he was—outside. I saw him prowling around.
One of the men did, too. He went out to watch him.
They don’t trust Jock, or his father.”
“But the children were at the tree—no they weren’t,
were they?”
“Lilly, Jock’s sister, told me that they didn’t have
clothes nice enough to come. They weren’t here when
the ‘Sunbeam’ list was made out, or they’d have had
those packages.”
“But their names were called!”
“Yes, there were things for them. And the candy bags
from Santa, they had those. I wonder where they are?”
“Probably still at the church,” said Lucy.
“Emma, do you mean that all that family of children
is sitting over there in that awful tumbledown place
without clothes or anything?”
“It’s a blessing if they’ve got food,” said Emma. “I
was wondering . . . I’ve got so much. Do you care if
I give something to Lilly and the little ones? Even if
they don’t take care of things, they’d be happy for a
while.”
86
“Lucy, couldn’t we give the Sperry children some of

my extra stuff—that doll, and those toys?” Marjorie
said.
“Lilly’s smaller than you are; you can give her your
sweater that shrank when I washed it, and your shoes
that are too small.”
“And some stockings,” said Marjorie, forgetting her
own presents while she planned to fill a carton with
happiness for another child. The baskets were packed.
Dan added some food from his own stores and agreed
to carry the heavier carton across the hill. As they were
ready to start, Emma stopped.
“I don’t care. I can’t give all that family presents
and leave Jock out. Would you care if I sent him the
paintbox you gave me? It wasn’t a real present from
you. You had two. I wouldn’t give anything you really
meant for a present, but—”
“But Emma, you wanted a paintbox like that.”
“I can still borrow your vermilion.”
“I know, I’ll give him that cheap wristwatch Mother
got for me to carry on walks,” added Marjorie. “I don’t
mind giving him something I don’t want myself—I
suppose that’s mean.”
She went to her room to get it and came down with
a flashlight as well.
“He’s got eyes like a cat,” she said, “but every boy
likes a flashlight.”
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MARJORIE
They met Lilly coming through the woods, crying

with deep sobs. Emma ran forward to meet her.
“Don’t cry, Lilly—it’s Christmastime!” she said.
Lilly looked up, but it wasn’t Christmas for her.
“We brought you some of your presents,” Emma
went on. “We’re sorry you weren’t at the church last
night.”
“Jock wouldn’t let us go,” Lilly said. “He said nobody
would give us nothing.”
“Somebody did,” said Marjorie stoutly, wondering
where Jock was. “Look in my basket!”
“I won’t,” said Lilly, with spirit. “You’re trying to fool
me. You’d be tickled if I took those boxes back to the
kids and told them they were presents, and then the
boxes was empty.”
“My goodness, you must think we’re silly to leave
our own Christmas and come over here to play tricks!
Look—here’s a doll for Georgia—does that look like a
trick?”
“A doll! Oh, she wants one so bad!”
“Take it. Take some of these boxes, too. Dan will
carry the big one.”
Lilly raced through the woods, calling for Georgia,
and in a moment all the Sperry children came
tumbling out of the cabin, surrounding Dan, who was
trying to explain to Mrs. Sperry.
“Look, Lilly!” said Marjorie. “This box—this little
88
one—is for Jock, and it isn’t a joke; it’s something he’ll

like, so don’t lose it, and don’t let the children open it
or break it.”
“For Jock!” said Lilly. “You’re giving him a present!
What are you doing that for?”
“Because it’s Christmas,” said Marjorie, who wanted
to get back to her own presents. They left the happy
Sperry children behind and found at their own
doorstep the rest of the island children, who had come
to see what Marjorie Jefferson had under her tree.
They had all been well treated, for the summer people
sent boxes to those families they knew well. Emma
and Marjorie spent the rest of the day going to see the
rest of the trees and playing with the new toys that had
filled the living rooms.
89
CHAPTER 9
Jock Breaks a Doll
Christmas was over. The cottage tree, trimmed with

tinsel and balls, was still up in the living room, but
most of the other island trees that had for their only
decoration their presents were taken down the next
day and had gone drifting out to sea.
“I suppose we ought to finish with it,” said Marjorie,
as the needles began to fall. “Every child on the island
has seen it.”
“All but the Sperrys,” said Emma.
“I forgot about them; it is just Lilly and Georgia in
school.”
“Well, here those two come now.” Lucy went to the
window. “And in trouble, I think.”
“I’ll bet Jock’s the reason.” Marjorie went to the door
to let in two tear-stained little girls.
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Jock Breaks a Doll
“Georgia’s doll—her Christmas doll!” Lilly held up

the pitiable object. The pretty curly wig was all muddy
and torn; the eyes rattled in the head, and one arm was
torn from the socket. Lilly unclenched Georgia’s hot
little hand.
“Here’s its foot,” she said.
For a moment Marjorie was speechless. Emma put
her arm around the sobbing child.
“Did the baby do that?” she asked.
“No, not the baby. Jock!”
“Jock!”
“When he came home and found we had our
Christmas things, he was awful mad. Said you’d given
us what you didn’t want yourself. He burned up the
book you gave him and tried to get mine, but I hid it. I
hid the doll, too. He was going to break up everything,
but Father made him give him the watch and the
flashlight. This morning, when we were out picking up
wood, he did this to the doll.”
Lucy came to the kitchen table with cake and milk.
“Let’s all have something to eat,” she said cheerfully,
“and then we’ll see what can be done. I think if you
leave dolly here for a little while, we can make her
almost as good as new.”
The two little girls came in to look at the pretty tree
and then went home, hand in hand, cheered by the
promise of a repaired doll. Marjorie stood over Lucy,
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MARJORIE
who had taken off the clothes and was figuring how to
clean and glue the broken parts. When the Sperry girls
came back, they found dolly almost as pretty as she
had been before. They were admiring the new dress
Lucy had made, when Matt came up the path.
“Come on, girls!” he said. “Sliding’s prime! We’ve
carried snow and iced the road. Get your new sled,
Emma; we’ll try her out.”
“Oh, I’d be afraid to go down the long hill on that
sled,” said Emma.
“I’ll take you down. Come on Lilly, Georgia. There’s
room for you. You can use my sled, and I’ll take
Marjorie and Emma on hers.”
From his seat on a fish-house barrel, Jock saw them
go and growled under his breath, but why he was
growling, he could not have told.
Marjorie soon found out, now that winter had really
come, how true Emma’s stories were of the fun they
had. Every minute out of school was spent on the hills,
sliding, or in the frozen meadow, where even the tiny
children stumbled about on skates. One afternoon,
the girls set out to find Dan, busy in the deep woods
cutting trees.
“Let’s go down the Long Swamp trail—everything’s
frozen solid.” Emma pushed aside the long, bare
branches of the alders and walked on the ice of a little
brook, hidden in summer by the shrubbery.
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Jock Breaks a Doll
“Dan says that when he was a little boy, they could

skate on this right into Cathedral Woods. See how
far back the spruces grow? It was all ice to there. The
alders spoiled it.”
“What made ’em?”
“Some of the men say they got a start when there
was a fire on Blackhead and they dug a trench across
the island to stop it. But Father says that the sheep
grazing on the island kept the shrubs down. The old
pictures have bare hills—no trees at all.”
“I wish there were sheep now—they’d be so pretty.”
“I don’t think they’re very pretty, and the rams are
ugly. And they didn’t let people have dogs because they
would chase the sheep, and they fell over the rocks and
killed themselves—silly things.”
“Dan said he is clearing out the trails.” Marjorie
stopped to listen in the clear air to the sound of axes.
“He said last night that there used to be an old ox road
clear to Blackhead, and once a year they rounded up
all the sheep and sheared their wool in a pen there.
There were some old sheep scissors in the shed. The ox
carts brought the fleeces back, tied up in bundles.”
“And then the women washed and scoured and
carded and spun them,” Emma said. “We’ve got my
grandmother’s loom, and we both can spin—but I
haven’t learned to card the wool yet. Aunt Melvina
does that.”
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MARJORIE
“They’re cutting the trail wide enough so that the

artists can carry canvases through without smearing
their fresh paint and without leaving paint on the
branches to get on people’s clothes.”
“Some of the summer people made a fuss and said
they wanted the trails left as they used to be, and Uncle
Hiram said, ‘All right, we’ll leave them as they used
to be. We’ll leave them as they were before you came.
Two oxen could walk abreast.’ That made them keep
still.” And Emma chuckled.
They found the men chopping and sawing branches
from the trees that lined the trail. Emma turned off on
a narrow path.
“I’ll take you to the Government mark on the hill—
dated 1852,” said Emma, and they went through the
lovely fern walk where an artist nearly a hundred years
ago had had trees cut down to make a paintable vista.
The brass plate was easily found.
“This is the highest point on the island, but they
didn’t put the light here because it was too far from the
village.”
Emma pointed out the remains of an old ladder—
boards nailed on a tall tree to make a lookout.
“Now the trees are so high that the light can’t
be seen from some places in the ocean. I guess the
government never thought of that!”
It was mail day and time for a letter from Marjorie’s
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Jock Breaks a Doll
mother. The boat got in at nine o’clock, and at recess

the children all dashed to the post office. Every child
in school got mail. They listened to the radio and sent
off box tops for dolls and games and transfer pictures.
They took part in contests in which everyone got a
prize. They sent for catalogs and spent their pocket
money buying trinkets and toys by mail. They wrote
to the summer people, who answered them on bright
postal cards. But Marjorie was the only one who got
letters plastered with foreign stamps.
Lucy was waiting for the mail, too, and she was
more worried than Marjorie. Her letters, more
frank than the ones Mrs. Jefferson wrote to her little
daughter, were not very encouraging. Mr. Jefferson
had not improved as had been expected. At recess
Marjorie turned the dial of the post office box and
took out the letters and newspapers. She handed the
rest of the mail to Lucy, and the three of them started
up the hill, Marjorie reading her letter as she went.
Suddenly there was a sharp cry. Lucy hurried to her
side.
“It’s Daddy—” said Marjorie, “Daddy! He isn’t any
better—he must be worse. Oh, Lucy, what shall I do!
What shall I do?”
Lucy, who had not opened her own letter, took
Marjorie’s from her shaking hand. It was not very long.
“Dear little girl,
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MARJORIE
Daddy is very sick—very sick.”

The words were almost illegible.
“Emma, tell the teacher that Marjorie won’t be
back,” said Lucy. “Now, Marjorie, stop crying. You’re
doing no one any good.”
“Daddy’s sick—he’s dying,” sobbed Marjorie.
“Nothing of the sort. This letter was written days
and days ago. We would have had a cablegram if
anything had happened. Now, come home and read
the rest of your letter.”
Ten minutes later, Emma stood in the door of the
Barter cottage. “Teacher said I might as well be here
as at school. What did your letter say, Marjorie? I only
saw the first two lines.”
“Daddy’s sick, but he was a little bit better when
Mother wrote the end of it.”
“Emma, you get the butter from the cellar, and we’ll
have hot muffins and butter. We’re just going to think
of Mr. Jefferson as better, until we know differently.”
Hot muffins and butter will revive any drooping
spirits, and with Emma to comfort her, Marjorie and
Lucy thought it a very good idea.
“I’d like to make Dan some ice cream.”
The kitchen turned into a bustling, untidy
workshop. The girls had to take their little cart and
go to the ice house for ice. In summer it was sold, but
after the season, anybody could have what was left.
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Jock Breaks a Doll
Then the eggs had to be beaten and the mixture put

together, and while one girl turned the freezer, the
other one mixed up some cookie dough and put it on
the sheets.
Dan came home before they were through, but he
did not mind the mess when Lucy whispered what had
been the reason.
They made a festive supper, lighting candles on the
table and putting Lucy’s blooming geranium in the
center. When Lucy saw Dan’s face as the girls set the
dessert in front of him, she felt that the long afternoon
had been worthwhile. And he enjoyed the treat so
much that he said:
“I think you deserve something for all this. How
would you like to go lobstering with me tomorrow? It
isn’t going to be cold.”
That was something Marjorie had been longing to
do ever since trap day, and in the morning she hunted
up her warmest clothes and got into a pair of trousers
that some summer person had left, over all the rest.
She looked like a stuffed figure when she got into the
boat, but there was no one to see.
The only place the girls could find to sit on the
lobster boat was the little space on the stern, the rest
was so filled with barrels, coils of rope, bait bags, and a
canvas tarpaulin. She and Emma sat while Dan steered
the boat around Smutty Nose and into the open water.
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MARJORIE
“I see one of our buoys!” cried Marjorie, who had

helped Dan paint the red tops on the otherwise white
buoys.
“I see another!” cried Emma.
“Take mine first, Dan.”
“Mine will have more lobsters in it.”
Dan reached out with his gaff and caught the rope
just below the buoy. This he put over the pulley in the
derrick hanging over one side of the boat and wound
the rope around the hub of the wheel.
“In the old days,” he said, as the dripping slats of the
lobster trap came to the surface, “the men had to pull
these by hand. They got awful tired doing it. Of course,
they didn’t have so many traps, but each trap caught
more lobsters.”
The trap was resting on the edge of the boat, and
Dan unwound the rope that held it shut. The bait bag
inside was empty, but the trap contents were not very
satisfactory—one small lobster, four stone crabs, and
about twenty starfish ranging in size from a quarter
of a dollar to twelve inches. With an exclamation of
annoyance, Dan scooped out the starfish and tossed
the crabs overboard. He eyed the single lobster
critically.
“Not big enough,” he decided, measuring it with a
stick that was tied to the inside of the boat. Back the
lobster went.
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Jock Breaks a Doll
Emma’s trap had more—three lobsters, only a few

starfish, and no crabs. Dan did not grudge the bait as
he rebaited that trap. He had a long steel needle, with a
wooden handle and an eye big enough to take a piece
of ganging. This needle he pushed through two or
three pieces of herring, with their heads and tails on,
and strung them on the ganging. With the end of this,
he fastened the trap shut. Then he gave the trap a push,
and the girls watched the clumsy thing slip away under
the water.
“Every other trap is mine,” said Marjorie.
“Every other trap is mine, then. I’ll mark down
three for me.”
The water was as still as a summer sea, with no cold
wind to cut through their coats. When Dan found
lobsters, he plugged their pinching claws with wooden
plugs that he had whittled out in winter evenings.
“How many traps are you going to pull?”
“All of ’em. They all need new bait. I haven’t been
out for some days.”
Marjorie gave a little shake of delight.
“I love this,” she said. “Why haven’t you brought us
out before?”
“’Tisn’t often you get such a calm day this time of
year. The air’s biting cold on the water, even if the sun
does shine. This one won’t last long. There’ll be a storm
by the time we get in.”
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MARJORIE
“It doesn’t seem as though it could ever storm.

Look, the water isn’t even breaking on the rocks. How
do you know where to put the traps out, Dan?”
“Dan knows where all the ledges are, don’t you,”
Emma answered her.
“Be ashamed of myself if I didn’t. I’ve fished these
waters ever since I was big enough to climb into a
boat. But when an airplane came out here a couple
of years ago and I went up in it, I saw a lot of ledges I
didn’t know were there. They’re just too deep for the
boat’s keel to make ’em at low tide. I hadn’t realized
you could see under water from an airplane, though I
might have known, because you can look down from a
headland and see shoals.”
Each trap was just as exciting as the last one.
Marjorie soon learned to distinguish between bait bag,
crab and occasional flounder, or small cod, starfish,
and the much desired lobster.
“I haven’t had a haul like this all winter,” said Dan.
“Look at this spider crab—want him for a pet?”
“Goodness, no! Throw him back. Emma, look at all
that yellow ice tumbling down the face of Whitehead.
It’s as yellow as a lemon.”
“I heard say that iron in that water makes it yellow.”
“I wish the people from Ohio who write and say
how bleak it must be in winter could see this today.
The snow makes the rocks redder than they are in
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Jock Breaks a Doll
summer, and the trees are green against the white

hills—and that yellow tumble of ice, and the green of
the water, and the deep blue of the sky, and the little
white line of foam against the rocks.”
“And the brown kelp,” added Emma, “and the white
gulls.”
“And your red caps and mittens,” said Dan.
“And the colored lobster buoys on the water. A
painter would need lots of colors to make a picture
look like this.”
The traps were all hauled, and the girls jumped off
the boat at the wharf before the sky clouded over, but
after they had eaten a tremendous luncheon, the sky
had turned gray, and there was no sign of the sun.
“It’s going to be cold, I can tell,” said Lucy. “Dan had
better set up the little wood stove in our bedroom. I’m
going up to the light this afternoon. Matt’s mother has
some quilts to tie. She said she’d about sold them off
her own bed this summer. Want to come, Marjorie?”
But Marjorie was too full of food and half asleep.
Emma had to help her mother that afternoon, and
Marjorie was alone. For an hour or so she was content,
but at last she got restless. She began to think about
her mother and father in far-off Switzerland. She was
cross at Lucy for leaving her alone and cross because
Emma had to help her mother. At last she put on her
coat and started for a walk, down past the summer
101
MARJORIE
cottages on the shore, where she seldom went.

Out of sight of the village, Marjorie was lonelier
than ever. She was ready to turn back when she caught
sight of a boy jumping from rock to rock along the
shore. It was Jock.
She knew that he had shipped on one of the lobster
smacks, sleeping aboard the boat and getting his meals
from the cook. That boat had not been in the harbor
for days. What was Jock doing here?
She saw him open one of the windows in a cottage
and slip in. In a moment a thin line of smoke curled
up from the chimney.
“Now he’s done it,” she thought. “Now I’ve got
something on him. Dan will have him punished for
breaking in, and that’s one of Dan’s cottages he takes
care of.”
Now, if she could only find Dan—but Dan could be
in any one of a dozen places, and Jock might be gone
when she came back. If she went down and faced Jock,
he would not be able to say that he was not there.
She tiptoed up the steps. There, through the
uncurtained window, Marjorie saw Jock sitting in
front of a tiny fire of broken branches on the hearth—a
fire too small to give much heat.
Jock’s shoes were off, and at the sight of his feet,
Marjorie caught her breath. They were cracked and
bleeding in long seams, raw and ugly looking, the
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Jock Breaks a Doll
result of standing long hours in cold salt water. A little

smoked-up pan stood on one side of the hearth, filled
with water. It was not the first time it had been used.
Jock was trying to doctor his own hurts.
At sight of his trouble, Marjorie forgot that she had
come to spy on him. She went to the window that she
had seen Jock open. At the sound of footsteps, Jock
sprang to his feet, but when he saw that it was only
Marjorie, his fright left him.
He reached for his clumsy, worn-out shoes, but they
were so wet and stiff that he had to work his feet into
them. He could not keep back grimaces of pain as the
hard leather rubbed the open sores. Marjorie forgot
that she disliked the boy. She remembered how much
a little cut on her thumb had hurt. These must be
awful.
“Haven’t you any stockings?” she asked.
“Get out of here!” snapped the boy. He could have
been more forceful if he had been standing, but he was
ashamed of his bare feet.
Marjorie stood silent. How could she help? Lucy
had salve and bandages, but she was up on Lighthouse
Hill, and Jock would be gone. Then she remembered
that when Lucy had cleaned the cottage in the fall,
there had been clean, soft cloths in a drawer. She could
use those, and Lucy would replace them.
“Get out of here!” commanded Jock again. “You
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MARJORIE
needn’t think you’re going to get me in trouble—

stealing things and blaming me.”
“You’re in trouble already.” Marjorie came back with
a clean, worn dish towel in her hand. “Look—cut this
in two, and wrap it around each foot. That will keep
your shoe off the skin, and maybe it’ll heal quicker.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
“Dan’s caretaker of this cottage. I saw you come in.
What he’ll say to you!”
“He can’t do nothin’ to me. I haven’t taken a thing.
I even bring my own wood. Gee, a feller’s got to have
some place!”
“There’d be plenty of places where you’d be
welcome, if you behaved yourself,” Marjorie said
severely. Jock did not reply. He carefully wound the
cloth around his feet.
“Now I’ve got my shoes on,” he said, “you get out of
here. I won’t hurt you, but you get out so I can shut up
the house. If Dan says anything to me, I’ll know you’ve
told him, and I’ll fix you, and Emma too!”
Marjorie stood looking at him. She remembered
how lonely she had been, half an hour before, yet she
had all the comforts there were, and Lucy and Dan and
a house to go back to. For the first time, she realized a
little what it must be like to be Jock, a boy who had no
one to turn to for help, or when he was sick.
“Dan says fishing’s been good. Why don’t you buy
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Jock Breaks a Doll
yourself shoes and stockings and a warm coat?”

“Ain’t nothin’ left after I buy food,” the boy
answered.
“Food! But I thought you were fed on the boat.”
“Yes, and I suppose my mother and sisters get their
food on the boat, too. What do you know?”
What did Marjorie know about children who were
hungry?
When Lucy came home, she found Marjorie busily
knitting on a half-finished sock. She had learned to knit
but had laid it aside. When Lucy heard her story, she
offered to help make a pair of socks for Jock’s poor feet.
“Now that they’re done,” said Marjorie, “how’m I
going to get them to Jock?”
“That’s easy.” Lucy looked out of the window. “Here
he comes now—with Dan.”
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CHAPTER 10
Who Stole the Money?
“Put on another plate, Lucy. Jock’s been baiting trawl

for me, and I brought him up for something to eat.”
Jock had certainly been baiting trawl. It is one of the
dirtiest, smelliest jobs in all the fishing industry, and
the men who do it put on old oilskins for the work and
scrub themselves thoroughly before they come into
the house. But poor Jock had no working garments,
nor any other clothes. Lucy gave her husband one
look, but Marjorie’s story kept her quiet.
“I know I ain’t fit to come into the house,” said Jock,
“but Dan, he would have me.”
“You come upstairs with me,” said Dan. “I’ve got
a clean pair of overalls you can put on, and you can
scrub yourself.”
To Marjorie’s great amazement, Jock knew how to
106
behave. Though he was hungry, he ate carefully, and

when Emma came dashing in, he said to her, “Nothing
here to scare you.”
Emma had not been told about Marjorie’s
experience, but she was a forgiving little girl, and as
all she asked of Jock was that he did not tease her, the
three children were soon playing with the Christmas
games, and the girls found that Jock was more than a
match for them both.
When he got up to go, Marjorie held out a little
packet.
“Please don’t be mad, Jock,” she said, and both of
them thought of the Christmas row Jock had made. “I
made you a pair of socks. I hope they’ll fit.”
“You?” the boy said. “You knit me socks?”
“Lucy helped me, or they wouldn’t have been done
so soon. And I’ll make you another pair, so you can
change. You can’t buy them on the island. And—and I
thought you ought to have some.”
“Well,” said the boy incredulously, “well, thanks.”
And putting the packet in his pocket, he rushed out of
the door and down the road.
“Wouldn’t you have thought he’d have looked at
them?” Marjorie was disappointed.
“I don’t suppose in all his life anybody ever did as
much for Jock Sperry as you folks have done today,”
said Emma, putting on her coat.
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MARJORIE
“Tie your scarf good!” Lucy came over to tighten

the knot. “Dan says we’re in for a real storm.”
And the next morning, Dan called Marjorie.
“Get up! I want you to see how the vapor starts.”
Marjorie, warmly dressed, skipped by Dan’s side to
the schoolhouse rocks.
“There’s no prettier sight than when the vapor
begins to lift,” the man said, “and Lucy thought you
ought to see the start of it.”
The water was blue—a deep gray blue with tiny
rippling waves. From the entire surface of the sea
came thin wraiths that looked like steam. They drifted
upward, changing in shape as flames change in a
fire. A few feet from the surface of the water, they
disappeared.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Marjorie.
“They look pretty from here, but there’s nothing a
seagoing man hates worse than vapor—‘sea smoke,’
some of ’em call it. We’re above it on the rocks, but
a man in a boat is surrounded by it before he knows
what’s happening. It’s not like fog. When fog parts,
you can see what’s ahead and how far away it is, but
the vapor fools you—you don’t know whether a rock
is a furlong or a mile away—and cold! There’s nothing
like it.”
They stood there, stamping their feet to keep them
warm, until the vapor wraiths grew taller. Neighboring
108
Manana Island was hidden, but the sun was shining

brightly on them.
“Home for you, now,” said Dan at last. “Say,
Marjorie, you’re some knitter. Jock showed me
the socks. You might make me a pair while you’re
housebound this week!” Dan was pleased with her.
The vapor continued, and on the radio they listened
to the warning broadcast to the ships at sea. Then the
fishermen began to look sober. There was danger of
the harbor freezing, and that meant the loss of traps,
and perhaps boats. If a northwest wind blew the ice
from the mainland rivers that was floating out to sea,
the ice would cut the ropes of the lobster traps like a
sharp knife, and the traps would be lost.
The vapor began to freeze on the trees and fences
till every outdoor thing was encased in ice. And when
the sun came out, the whole island glistened like a
frosted cake. It was too cold to be out-of-doors long,
but there was plenty to see from the cottage windows.
Then the wind turned northwest, and the mail boat
brought disturbing news. The stream of river ice was
flowing steadily between the mainland and the island.
The mail boat was equipped for ice breaking, but the
captain had had to make his way carefully between the
floes.
“Is there anything they can do to keep it out of the
harbor?”
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MARJORIE
“Nothing. Ice with a strong wind behind it is

powerful.”
But the main stream of ice went its way down the
channel. From the schoolhouse windows, Marjorie
watched the harbor ice freeze—first a thin line, which
deepened as the water farther out turned to ice. At last
a flowing channel through the harbor by the wharf was
clear, and then men could go to their boats by pushing
a punt ahead of them, in case the ice broke beneath
them. The boys ran along the ice from the wharf to the
fish beach, and Dan gave Marjorie a ride in his punt,
pushing it as though it were a sled.
But at last the vapor lifted, and the ice began to jam
on the banks, cake pushing cake until some of them
were edged straight in the air. The meadow was solid
with clear black ice, and everybody on the island—
man, woman, and child—skated. At night the men
made bonfires, and someone brought out a portable
radio that played rhythmic music. Marjorie, skating
with her hands in Dan’s, gave a little sigh.
“Tired?” the man asked. They had become good
friends, at last.
“I was just thinking—if word came from Mother
and I wanted to get off the island, what would I do?”
“We’d get you off some way—you could fly,” said Dan.
“Could I? Could a plane land?”
“If you have to go, we’ll get you off. After all, the
110
mail boat runs. But you won’t have to go. Your father
will be all right. I’m sure of it.” And Marjorie was
comforted.
At last winter was over, and the spring was
welcomed by winds that blew so hard that Lucy said
one afternoon, “The only reason I’m sure that this
house won’t blow over is that it never has. It certainly
shakes.”
“Here comes Dan, and something’s the matter. He
looks worried.”
Lucy was always alarmed, expecting word from
Mrs. Jefferson, but Dan shook his head.
“No, it’s Jock.”
“Jock?” The boy had been behaving himself for
weeks.
“Sime Brigham left a roll of bills hidden on the
boat—fool thing to do!—but the bills have gone, and
Jock’s been sleeping on the boat alone. He’s had some
money to spend lately. I hate to have it happen. Sime
ought to have had more sense.”
Marjorie stood in the middle of the floor. “I don’t
believe it.”
“Why, Marjorie honey!”
“Where’s Jock?”
“Off in the woods somewhere. We can’t do anything
till Doc Carter, the captain, gets back; he’s off on the
mainland. Jock can’t get away—nobody would take
111
MARJORIE
him off the island. They’ll probably have the sheriff

come out.”
“And arrest him?” Marjorie’s eyes were big.
“Of course, they’ll arrest him. Fifty dollars is a lot of
money.”
“Where does Jock say he got the money he spent?”
“I don’t know. When he shows up, I’ll ask him.”
“Oh, I think they’re mean!” The old Marjorie was
back again, the tempestuous, turbulent, excitable
Marjorie—but she had Lucy’s sympathy.
“What makes you say you don’t believe it?”
“Because Jock’s done mean things, and cruel
ones, but you never heard anybody say he ever took
anything. Even at school, he never took a pencil. I
know he didn’t take that money.”
Marjorie thought about it. “You don’t start by taking
fifty dollars,” she thought. “He would have taken little
things first.”
When Dan came home, he had seen Jock. When
he was asked where he got the money he had spent,
he answered that it was wages—that the captain had
given it to him.
“Well, the least they can do is to wait till Captain
Carter comes back and ask him.”
“He won’t be here for a week—he’s gone to his
daughter in the hospital.” Dan frowned.
“Why don’t they wire him?”
112
“Who’s going to spend money for a wire?”

“I will,” said Marjorie. “I haven’t spent my
allowance—not half of it. You write the wire, Dan, and
I’ll pay for it.”
“Well, you are a spunky kid, I’ll tell you. I’ll get Sime
to put off having the sheriff, and I’ll keep Jock around
for a day or two. We’ll see what happens.”
“Then you don’t think he took the money?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not. It was an awful
temptation. I think Sime ought to lose it for being so
careless. But I’ll bring Jock home for supper.”
But he came home without the boy.
“He’s obliged, but he won’t come,” he reported.
“Marjorie, where are you going?”
“To get Jock.”
She knew where he would be—in Dan’s fish house—
and when she insisted, he came out, looking very
white.
“Wash your face and come home with me. We’ve got
fish hash. I don’t believe you took that money. None of
us do.”
“I’d have thought you’d be the first to believe it,” he
said.
“Well, you are wrong,” said the determined little girl.
“Now come along. The fish hash smells wonderful.”
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CHAPTER 11
Marjorie of Monhegan
Though Jock did not know it, the telegram to

Captain Carter had been sent. And at Dan’s table, with
people who believed in him, Jock was willing to talk
when the supper of fish hash and applesauce had been
eaten and enjoyed.
“I knew that Sime kept money there. I never knew
how much.”
“Did the other men know there was money there?”
“Sure, he never hid it.”
“Have you any idea where it went?”
“You don’t think I took it, do you?”
“No, we don’t.” Marjorie was positive.
“Well, now that somebody believes in me, I can
stand it. I didn’t take it. I don’t know who did.”
When Jock went back to the fish house to sleep on
114
an old cot there, he took the memory of Marjorie’s last

words with him.
“Don’t you be scared, Jock,” she said. “We’ll find
who took that money. And that old Sime Brigham—
he’ll be sorry he ever said mean things about you.
You’ll see.”
Marjorie had a couple of strong arguments at school.
“It’s funny,” said Emma at last. “Here you are
standing up for Jock. You nearly got into a fight with
Tim this recess, and what do you care about him
anyway? Jock’s certainly been mean enough to you.”
“I know it, but I just know he didn’t take that
money. And I don’t think Tim ought to say he did
until he knows.”
Then word came that the captain’s daughter was
better, that he would be back on the island in a couple
of days, and that the crew could get ready to go out.
When Dan came home one night, he was hurrying up
the hill as though he had good news—which he had.
“Where’s Jock?” he said, and the boy came in with a
load of stove wood for Lucy.
“Captain Carter’s here,” Dan said. “He wants to see
you, down in the fish house.”
Lucy looked at Jock. Now if he were guilty, he would
show it. But the boy’s expression did not change.
“Captain Carter?” he said. “Sure I’ll go.” And he was
off down the road.
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MARJORIE
“We found the money,” said Dan, as soon as the boy

could not overhear.
“You did? Why didn’t you tell Jock?”
“Captain Carter wanted to tell him himself. He
didn’t get the telegram; it was held for him at the
hospital, and he had gone with his daughter.”
“Who took the money?”
“Captain Carter himself.”
“For goodness’ sake!”
“He went in a hurry and needed cash. He knew
Sime left the money there. He put a slip of paper back
saying he’d taken it, and the slip blew away—we found
it behind the locker. Sime was off on a dory when the
captain left. Sime’s ashamed of himself.”
And when Jock came back, he was a happy boy. He
didn’t say much, but he went over to Marjorie.
“Now you know you were right,” he said. “And
I want to say one thing. I never will take anything,
anywhere, as long as I live. You can count on that.”
When the spring turned to early summer, the letters
from Switzerland were more cheerful. Mr. Jefferson
was better. At last he could write letters to his little
girl. The snapshots sent of him showed snow-covered
mountains behind him.
“If he has to live in mountains,” scolded Marjorie,
“I don’t see why he can’t come back and live in our
own mountains. We have a lot of those in Colorado.
116
Or why couldn’t he stay here? This Monhegan Island

is the healthiest place in the world. Nobody who lives
here ever dies!”
“I guess your mother will think it’s healthy,” agreed
Lucy. “Look at you! Fifteen pounds heavier and two
sizes bigger. The Sperry girls will have to have all your
last year’s clothes.”
“Then I’ll get polo shirts and overalls and be
comfortable.”
“If I’d wanted a boy to wash for, I’d have taken one
on,” answered Lucy.
“You’ve about got Jock on your hands.” Marjorie
dragged out the well-worn mail order catalog and
began to make out lists of blue striped overalls, polo
shirts with zippers at the throat, and blue sneakers
trimmed with white.
Lucy had her share of those foreign envelopes,
and one day when Marjorie was safely in school, a
cable came that brought news that Lucy had difficulty
concealing.
The first of June brought the daily mail boat,
and all the islanders went down to meet her as she
chugged in from Port Clyde. Marjorie, with the other
island children, was on the dock. It was a lovely,
warm afternoon. There were people on the boat—
several people. Lucy stood watching as the prow came
nearer.
117
MARJORIE
“Marjorie, look!” she said.

“I’ve seen the boat,” the girl answered. “If I had a
line, I could catch some of these cunners.”
“You haven’t seen this boat.” And something in
Lucy’s tone made Marjorie look at her more carefully.
The boat was near enough now so that individual
people could be distinguished.
“Look, Marjorie!” said Lucy again.
“I don’t want to look. The summer people only
clutter up the island. It’s nicer when they aren’t here.”
“Two of them won’t do any cluttering.” And Lucy
took Marjorie by the shoulders and turned her about to
face the boat. From one of the figures came a little cry.
“Marjorie! Marjorie darling!”
The man in the chair beside her got to his feet.
They had both been searching the wharf for the
sight of their daughter, but Marjorie had changed
so much that neither of them recognized her at that
distance.
Marjorie never knew how she managed to wait
until the boat was within reach. Not waiting for the
gangplank, she went over the side of the wharf into the
arms of her mother, who could hardly let her go long
enough to hand her to her father in his turn.
In spite of the confusion of landing, Mr. Jefferson
was helped into the truck, which was waiting to drive
him straight to the cottage, where Lucy had made
118
every preparation for his comfort. Marjorie and her

mother rode in the back, talking busily all the time.
And when the family was all together again before
the hearth fire in the living room, Marjorie heard all
the story.
Mr. Jefferson was well again, but not strong. He was
to stay a week so that Marjorie could show her mother
all her favorite spots on the island. Then the three were
to go straight to Colorado, not even stopping off at
their home in Ohio.
“Colorado! Then I can still wear overalls and
sneakers. I can ride horses. But—” And her face fell. “I
don’t want to go. Summer on the island isn’t as nice as
winter. But it’s awfully nice. Couldn’t we stay here? Of
course, I want to be with you and Father—couldn’t we
all come back next winter? You’d like it here then.”
“You’ve made a regular islander out of her,” said Mr.
Jefferson to Dan.
“Who wouldn’t be?” Marjorie answered. “It’s the
nicest place in the world, and I always want to belong
to it. I’m proud to be Marjorie of Monhegan.”
119
Marjorie Jefferson is used to a life of indulgence in
Ohio, but when her parents must travel overseas for
her father’s health, Marjorie is sent to stay with
Lucy, her childhood nurse. Lucy lives on the
beautiful island of Monhegan, where hard work and
kindness are of great value. However, Marjorie
doesn't see anything valuable in living on Monhegan
Island, and Dan, Lucy's husband, doesn't appreciate
Marjorie's poor attitude. The longer Marjorie stays
on the island, though, the more she finds that
there's something special about life on Monhegan
that could forever change her –something more than
just the fresh sea air.
For use with the Level 5 Language Arts course

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Marjorie Jefferson is used to a life of indulgence in

Ohio, but when her parents must travel overseas for

For use with the Level 5 Language Arts course

Marjorie Comes to Monhegan���������������� 1

The tap of the bell on the teacher’s desk signaled

“Monhegan’s a wonderful place for anybody,” said

your mind, I can tell. Mrs. Jefferson want more rugs?”

“Something will have to help toward it. Fishin’ isn’t

one a lighthouse. Boats lay at anchor between Duck

Lucy stopped to pull a leaf from the fragrant bay

“How funny!” said Marjorie.

“A real fisherman’s supper, Marjorie,” he said kindly.

Mrs. Jefferson’s bags. Marjorie threw herself on the

window to window. He was restless without his work.

In all Marjorie Jefferson’s life, she had never

“Lucy’s my wife and not a nursemaid. You’re

was afraid that any expression of sympathy would

in this house, and Dan treats you the way he would

“You’re about on the rocks,” came the answer.

want to get to shore with it in the early morning.”

any kind of fish—only ropes and dirty-looking boxes

“All right,” Marjorie yawned. “What time is it?”

“It’s soaking wet here, but I see some frost flowers.”

sea rolling in lazily. Marjorie began to run down the

Both girls ran straight across the little beach of the

path, where the long tendrils of trailing yew covered the

Marjorie a hand when the rocks were exposed and

“When will your school be out?” she asked Emma

she hurried to her seat and began a morning of

“That’s Matt’s desk,” said Emma when Marjorie told

“Why don’t you go with the youngsters, Lucy?”

“We stock these pools with starfish and limpets

“Isn’t anybody hungry?” said Lucy at last.

Marjorie, but she was bending over the basket, taking

“Wind’s coming up.” Lucy put everything into the

The summer went by swiftly. With Emma, Marjorie

Monhegan children wore the outgrown clothes of their

sitting on the prow of the boat, their bare feet slapped

Like an echo to her thought, her mother’s letter lay

“But Mother will pay for me.”

“Help with the work? Why should I? Mother pays

last. “You sound as though you had to take care of the

“Lucy wants to keep you,” he said, “but you make

expected to see them in the air. “I thought mackerel

“I don’t see any mackerel.” Marjorie tried to button

Marjorie looked at him and felt a big load roll off

The summer was really over. All the summer

“That old shack? Why, it’s all tumbling down.”

Me and my folks are going to live here now. We don’t

Marjorie looked over her shoulder, and the boy

before and knew him to be a boy who meant what he

take forever, but I’m willing. I wouldn’t let that horrid

hair into a bob,” he said gleefully. “Won’t he be mad!”

“Come, come, Marjorie, there’s no use spoiling our

do mental arithmetic without counting on her fingers,

larger number, and keep up with Dan when he devised

had to be fenced from them. There are still sheep on

“Do you suppose Dan would let me use it?”

The windows looked out of squares cut away from

The door swung inward in a room so like a story

fireplace to Marjorie and sat down on the other.

proud of stockings you spun and knit yourself,

appeared at Marjorie’s elbow. It was Aunt Melvina.

piece. Then she held out her hands for Marjorie’s

Marjorie Comes to Monhegan�� 1