buried treasure with Aunt Cal seemed out of the question.

Meanwhile our life at Fishers Haven flowed along serenely. We found that Aunt Cal was not hard to get along with, once you adapted yourself to her ways. She had lived so long alone that she couldn’t help being rather set in her habits, Eve said. Indeed it was due mostly to Eve’s tact and diplomacy that things went so smoothly. Eve had had some experience in visiting relatives and, though she admitted that none of them was in the least like my aunt, still, as she said, when you go to stay in somebody else’s house, you just have to make up your mind to doing things differently than when you are in your own home.

We began to feel quite at home too in the village, at the stores where Aunt Cal “traded” and at the post office where we went for the mail each morning and at any other odd moment when time hung too heavily on our hands. We explored the shore for miles and, covering our bathing suits modestly with coats in deference to Aunt Cal’s proprieties, walked to the beach for a swim nearly every day.

It was one afternoon when we returned rather late from one of these expeditions that we found the kitchen door locked. The key was under the mat where Aunt Cal—with what Eve called a painful lack of imagination—always placed it if she went out while we were away. We let ourselves in and found a note on the kitchen table addressed to me.

“Have gone to Old Beecham to see a sick friend who has just sent for me. Rose Blossom is driving me out. May have to spend the night. If I am not back by nine, put Adam in the kitchen, lock up and go to bed.

“Hurrah!” I cried, seizing the startled Adam from his cushion and beginning to waltz with him about the kitchen.

“You don’t,” remarked Eve, “seem so awfully depressed at the news of Aunt Cal’s suffering friend!”

“I wasn’t thinking of her at all,” I confessed. “I was wondering if we couldn’t make a Welsh rarebit for supper. I’m fed up with beans and fried potatoes.” For some reason Aunt Cal’s note had filled me with a strange exhilaration. The thought of being on our own, if only for a few hours, was exciting. “Why, we won’t even have to wash the dishes if we don’t want to! And we can sit up as late as we please.”

The odor of toasting cheese is delectable at all times. Never have I known it so delicious as it was that night. Adam, too, seemed to find the atmosphere of the kitchen 

 Prev. P 28/126 next