“No, we don’t want to leave the homestead. Jerry brings me in good weather, and when he can’t get through I go on snowshoes to the nearest neighbors and the school dray picks me up there.”

“You walk? All that distance?” Even Mr. Seymour was astonished.

“It ain’t so far. Only four or five miles.”

Ann was tremendously impressed. “You come all that distance every day?”

“Lots of the fellows do it, and the girls, too. Everybody goes to school even if they do live out on a farm.” Jo was very matter-of-fact about it. He never had thought of pitying himself, nor thought of admiring himself, either.

Ann liked the way the small white houses nestled together with the church steeple standing over them. The steeple reminded her of a lighthouse piercing up into the blue sky. Above it the scudding bits of11 cloud were flying by like little sailboats she had once seen racing across Boston Bay.

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After they had passed through the village Jo turned into a winding road which grew wilder and more unkempt as Jerry plodded along. Puffs of dust rose behind the wheels and the hot sun on the pines made the air heavy with fragrance. Finally the road plunged down into a ravine where the air was cool and the sound of running water could be heard. The pines met overhead and made a soft rustling noise more quiet than silence.

“The river runs under the road here,” explained Jo. “Then it goes down into the sea. The sea is just beyond those trees,” and he pointed through the pines with his whipstock.

From the ravine once again they climbed into the sunlight, mounting up over cliffs and rocks, until the sea suddenly spread out endlessly before them. From here they could look back and see the mouth of the river as it foamed out of the pines into the broader expanse of water. Gray shingled huts were clustered on the banks just out of reach of the swishing rush of tide, and bent figures of men, tiny, and yellow in their oilskins, could be seen moving in and out of the boats drawn on the shore.

“Lobstermen,” said Jo before Ann had a chance to ask him. “They bring their boats in there. We have our boat down in the cove, my father and I. Do you know anything about lobstering?” And he12 turned to her with his eyes twinkling. Well enough he knew she did not.

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