Free Storm Tide by Elisabeth Ogilvie

hour.”
    She left Joey first, at the Merrills’. Mrs. Merrill opened the door to them with a welcome that was heartening to a boy starting a new school in strange country. The Captain was down at the shore, she said, working on the new boat; he’d most likely want Joey to come down and help him after school. That was, if Joey wanted to.
    Joey’s amber eyes were very big. “ Gosh ,” he breathed reverently. “Sure I want to. Boats—I mean—I—” His words strangled in his throat. He turned very red, and Mrs. Merrill and Joanna, knowing what he meant, mercifully forgot he was there.
    They talked for a few minutes, and then it was time to take Ellen to Mrs. Robey. It was still early enough so the children could present themselves at morning recess and not lose the whole session.
    â€œJoey,” Joanna said to him, “Ellen will be just around the bend in the road, in the little white house nestled against the hill. Be sure to fasten the gate behind you, or somebody’s cows will be into Whit’s dahlias. Would you mind calling for Ellen and walking to school with her just this first day?”
    â€œGosh no,” said Joey earnestly, if vaguely. He was still in a dream of boat-building.
    â€œHe’ll be along, soon as he’s fortified with a glass of milk and a couple of doughnuts,” said Mrs. Merrill. “My, Joanna, with that build and that fair hair, he puts me in mind of my Bob, when he was that age.”
    This is going to work out all right , Joanna thought as she left him. It was a responsibility, finding a boarding place for another woman’s child. But she should have known it would work out all right. Boats were Joey’s passion. So were they Cap’n Merrill’s. And Mrs. Merrill loved boys. Good or bad, it made no difference to her; besides, they were usually all good after a concentrated dose of her grandmothering.
    It’s a pretty house,” said Ellen, walking backward. “Is mine as nice as that?”
    â€œOh yes, you’ll like it.”
    â€œI hope so.” Ellen sounded dubious. “Can I come down and call on Mrs Merrill?” She could hardly take her eyes from the spotless white house with its ell kitchen, and red vines climbing over the sprawling porch, the heavily fruited apple trees around it and the wall of spruces around it. The fieldstone well curb had a special fascination for her.
    Joanna hoped prayerfully that the Robeys’ white picket fence, with dahlias, would make up for the well curb. And it did. Other things helped. For instance, the way the rambling, low-posted house fitted against the hillside, and the ice-pond on the other side of the twisty road through the spruces. . . . Oh, this was almost better than apple trees, Ellen’s eyes said.
    Mrs. Robey was not a plump white-haired grandmother like Mrs. Merrill, but a slender, quiet-voiced one, who showed Ellen a little low-ceilinged room with a flowery quilt on the bed. There was a rocker just Ellen’s size with an old-fashioned doll sitting in it; she looked at Ellen with bright blue eyes painted in her china face. She wore full rose-sprigged skirts, and it was clear from Ellen’s first enchanted glimpse of her that they were going to be friends.
    â€œHer name is Phoebe,” said Mrs. Robey.
    â€œPhoebe,” repeated Ellen in a soft, careful voice. She kissed Joanna good-bye very serenely.
    â€œI thought I was going to miss you,” she said, her arms around her mother’s neck. “But now I don’t think so.”
    â€œI don’t think so either,” Joanna agreed. “And after all, if you walk up to the top of the hill, you can look down across Brigport to Bennett’s and see the house over there.”
    â€œGood-bye,” Ellen said. “I want to count Phoebe’s petticoats before Joey comes. One of them has ruffles on it.”
    â€œI’m dismissed,” Joanna said to Mrs.