“What’s up, Ann?” Ben stirred restlessly in the adjoining room. “It will be morning before you get to bed.”

“Oh, I was looking out of the window. The stars are so bright in Maine!”

“Ann! What do you think about that ship? I feel as if ghosts lived on her.”

Ann climbed her little flight of steps and slid down between upper sheet and feathers.

“Nonsense,” she called to Ben. “Ghosts don’t carry lanterns.”

“What?” Ben’s voice sounded much more awake. “What did you say, Ann?”

“I said I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Ann slid farther into her feather nest and promptly went to sleep.

29

CHAPTER III HOW THE BOAT CAME ASHORE

HOW THE BOAT CAME ASHORE

Vaguely Ann heard a bell ringing. She thought that she was lobstering with Jo and that Jo was pulling up a bell in one of the heavy lobster pots. They were bobbing about on waves as high as mountains.

Vaguely

“It is seven o’clock! No farmer stays in bed late, you know.”

It was Mrs. Seymour’s voice.

How could her mother have come away out to sea? Ann sat up in bed, not awake yet. And then she saw the sun pouring in through the open windows. Her mother was standing in the hall between Ann’s room and Ben’s, swinging an old ship’s bell that she must have found somewhere in the house.

“In one minute, mother!”

How queer to wash in a huge bowl in her room instead of in a bathroom! And how lovely to dry oneself while standing on a braided mat before the washstand with the sun pouring down on one’s back and legs! Bloomers and middy had miraculously appeared from her baggage; some fairy had been at 

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