hour.â
She left Joey first, at the Merrillsâ. 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; heâd most likely want Joey to come down and help him after school. That was, if Joey wanted to.
Joeyâs amber eyes were very big. â Gosh ,â he breathed reverently. âSure I want to. BoatsâI meanâIââ 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.
âJoey,â Joanna said to him, âEllen 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 somebodyâs cows will be into Whitâs dahlias. Would you mind calling for Ellen and walking to school with her just this first day?â
âGosh no,â said Joey earnestly, if vaguely. He was still in a dream of boat-building.
âHeâll be along, soon as heâs fortified with a glass of milk and a couple of doughnuts,â said Mrs. Merrill. âMy, Joanna, with that build and that fair hair, he puts me in mind of my Bob, when he was that age.â
This is going to work out all right , Joanna thought as she left him. It was a responsibility, finding a boarding place for another womanâs child. But she should have known it would work out all right. Boats were Joeyâs passion. So were they Capân Merrillâs. 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.
Itâs a pretty house,â said Ellen, walking backward. âIs mine as nice as that?â
âOh yes, youâll like it.â
âI hope so.â Ellen sounded dubious. âCan I come down and call on Mrs Merrill?â 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 Robeysâ 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, Ellenâs 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 Ellenâs 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 Ellenâs first enchanted glimpse of her that they were going to be friends.
âHer name is Phoebe,â said Mrs. Robey.
âPhoebe,â repeated Ellen in a soft, careful voice. She kissed Joanna good-bye very serenely.
âI thought I was going to miss you,â she said, her arms around her motherâs neck. âBut now I donât think so.â
âI donât think so either,â Joanna agreed. âAnd after all, if you walk up to the top of the hill, you can look down across Brigport to Bennettâs and see the house over there.â
âGood-bye,â Ellen said. âI want to count Phoebeâs petticoats before Joey comes. One of them has ruffles on it.â
âIâm dismissed,â Joanna said to Mrs.