Pirate Gold | Page 9

tell the truth than by asking her questions!)
Jamie was very good to her, she said, and grandpa most of all; grandma
was cross sometimes. ("Jamie"! "grandpa"! Old Mr. Bowdoin made a
mental note.) But she was very lonely: she had no children to play with.
Mr. Bowdoin's heart warmed at once. "You must come down here often,
my dear!" he cried; thus again laying up a wigging from his auguster
spouse. But "Jamie"! "Why don't you call your kind friend father, since
you call old McMurtagh grandpa?"
The child shook her head. "He has never asked me to," she said.
"Besides, he is not my father. My father wore gold trimmings and a
sword."
This sounded more like De Soto than Silva.
"Do you remember him?"
"Not much, sir."
"What was his name?"
The child shook her head again. "I do not know, sir. He only called me
Mercedes."

Mr. Bowdoin was fain to rummage in his pocket, either for a
handkerchief or for a lump of Salem "Gibraltars:" both came out
together in a state of happy union. Mercedes took hers simply. Only
Miss Dolly was too proud to eat candy in the carriage. The Salem
Gibraltar is a hard and mouth-filling dainty; and by its administration
little Ann and Jane, who had been chattering in front, were suddenly
reduced to silence.
By this time they had come through to the outer cliff, and were driving
on a turf road high above the sea. The old gentleman was watching the
breakers far below, and Mercedes had a chance to look about her at the
houses. They passed by a great hotel, and she saw many gayly dressed
people on the piazza; she hoped they were going to stop there, but they
drove on to a smallish house upon the very farthest point. It was not a
pretentious place; but Mercedes was pleased with a fine stone terrace
that was built into the very last reef of the sea, and with the pretty little
lawn and the flowers.
As the children rushed into the hall, Ann and Jane struggling to keep on
Mr. Bowdoin's shoulders, they were stopped by a maid, who told them
Mrs. Bowdoin was taking a nap and must not be disturbed. So they
were carried through to the back veranda, where Mr. Bowdoin dumped
the little girls over the railing upon a steep grass slope, down which
they rolled with shrieks of laughter that must have been most damaging
to Mrs. Bowdoin's nerves. Dolly and Mercedes followed after; and the
old gentleman settled himself on a roomy cane chair, his feet on the rail
of the back piazza, a huge spy-glass at his side, and the "Boston Daily
Advertiser" in his hand.
At the foot of the lawn was the cliff; and below, a lovely little pebble
beach covered with the most wonderful shells. Never were such shells
as abounded upon that beach!--tropical, exotic varieties, such as were
found nowhere else. And then--most ideal place of all for a child--there
was a fascinating rocky island in the sea, connected by a neck of twenty
yards of pebble covered hardly at high water; and on one side of this
pebble isthmus was the full surf of the sea, and on the other the quiet
ripple of the waters of the bay. But such an island! All their own to

colonize and govern, and separated from home by just a breadth of
danger.
All good children have some pirate blood; and I doubt if Mercedes
enjoyed it more than Ann and Jane and even haughty Dolly did. And to
the right was the wide Massachusetts Bay, and beyond it far blue
mountains, hazy in the southern sun. Then there were bath-houses, and
little swimming-suits ready for each, into which the other children
quickly got, Mercedes following their example; and they waded on the
quiet side; Mercedes rather timidly, the other children, who could swim
a little, boldly. Old Mr. Bowdoin (who was looking on from above)
shouted to them to know "if they had captured the island."
"Grapes grow on the island," said Ann and Jane.
Dolly was silent; Mercedes would have believed any fairy tale by now.
And they started for it, Harley leading; but the tide was too high, and at
the farther end of the little pebble isthmus the higher breakers actually
came across and poured their foam into the clear stillness. Ann and
Jane were afraid; even Dolly hesitated; as for Harley, he was stopped
by discovering a beautiful new peg-top which had been cast up by the
sea and was rolling around upon the outer beach.
"Discoverers must be brave!" shouted Mr. Bowdoin from above. And
Mercedes shut her eyes and made a dash through the yard of deeper
water as the breaker on