"He"s quite a character."
"Why do they call him Tin-Back?" asked Amy. "Has he really a----"
"A tin back? How funny that would be?" laughed Betty.
"You must ask him," declared her father. "I didn"t have time when I came down to see if everything was all right."
"Oh, what lovely times we"ll have, girls!" sighed Mollie, when, a little later, the four chums were conversing. "We can go sailing, bathing and sit on the sands and watch the tide come in."
"And perhaps find buried pirate-treasure in some cave," added Betty, with a laugh.
"Can we, really?" asked Amy, perhaps the most unsophisticated of the quartette.
"Really what?" asked Grace, silently offering her bag of sweets. The habit was almost automatic with her.
"Find buried treasure," said Amy, eagerly. "I should love to do that.
I"ve often read----"
"That"s all you can do--read about it," spoke Mollie, regretfully.
"There isn"t any romance left in this world. If there was a pirate"s cave it would be lighted with electricity and an admission fee charged.
And yet the New England coast ought to contain some treasure. Some pirates used to land there."
"Did they, Mr. Nelson?" asked Amy, catching sight of Betty"s father again glancing over the top of his paper.
"Did pirates ever land on the coast near where we are going?"
"Well, perhaps, yes. I believe there are several stories about Kidd"s treasure being buried somewhere around Ocean View. Or, perhaps it would be more correct to say that _one_ of Kidd"s treasures. On the very lowest count he must have had at least a double score, all hidden in different places."
"Really?" demanded Amy, with glistening eyes, and flushed cheeks.
"Well, as really as any other treasure story, I suppose," answered Mr.
Nelson, while Betty murmured:
"Oh, Daddy! Don"t tease her!"
"I"m not!" he declared. "It is possible that there may be some treasure buried in the sand near Ocean View. Stranger things have happened."
"Oh, what if _we_ should find it!" cried Amy. "I"m going to look the first thing I do."
"Find what?" asked Grace, who had been looking from the window as they pa.s.sed through a town.
"Buried treasure," Amy said.
"Oh, I thought you meant Will"s secret," observed Grace. "I wonder where that train boy is?" she went on.
"What for?" asked Betty.
"I want another box of those chocolates. They were a new kind and----"
"Grace Ford! If you buy another bit of candy before we arrive I--I don"t know what I"ll do to you!" threatened Betty.
The train rolled on, as all trains do, and, eventually, the little seaside resort of Ocean View was reached. There was the usual scramble on the part of our friends, and other pa.s.sengers, to alight, and when the girls stood on the rather dingy platform of the station Mollie, looking about her in some disappointment, said:
"Ocean View! I don"t see why they call it that. You can"t see the ocean at all."
"It"s down that way," said Mr. Nelson, with a wave of his hand toward the east. "Property is too valuable along the sh.o.r.e to allow of the village being there. The town is about a mile back from the water. We"ll take a carriage to the cottage. You see the railroad doesn"t run very close to the ocean."
Ocean View was like most summer resorts, built some distance back from the sh.o.r.e, which property was held by cottage or bungalow owners. There were several sh.e.l.l roads running from the main street of the town down to the water"s edge, however. And soon, in a carriage, with their valises piled around them, our party set off for Edgemere, leaving a truckman to bring the trunks.
"Oh what a perfectly dear place!" exclaimed Grace, as the carriage turned along a highway that paralleled the beach. "And how blue the water is!"
They were up on a little elevation. Down below them was a large bay, enclosed in a point of land that ran out into the ocean, forming a perfect breakwater.
"Where is Edgemere?" asked Mollie.
"Over there," answered Betty, pointing.
The girls beheld a large cottage nestling amid a group of evergreen and other trees, on the very point of land that jutted out, with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other.
"Oh, how perfectly charming!" exclaimed Amy. "And we can have still water bathing as well as that in the surf."
"Exactly," answered Betty. "That"s why mamma and I decided on it. I like still water myself."
"So do I," murmured Amy.
"I don"t! I want the boiling surf!" declared Mollie, who was an excellent swimmer.
They drove up to the cottage, finding new delights every moment, and when the carriage stopped within the fence, at the side porch, the whole party waited a moment before alighting to admire the place.
"It _is_ nice," decided Mrs. Nelson. "I had forgotten part of it, but I like it even better than I thought I should."
"It"s sweet!" declared Grace.
"Horribly fascinating, as Percy Falconer would say," mocked Mollie.
"Don"t!" begged Betty, making a wry face.
As they were alighting, a quaint figure of an old man, bent and shuffling, with gnarled and twisted hands, and a face almost lost in a bush of beard, yet in whose blue eyes twinkled kindliness and good fellowship, came around the side path.
"Wa"al, I see ye got here!" he exclaimed in hoa.r.s.e tones--his voice seemed to be coming out of a perpetual fog.
"Yes, we"ve arrived," Mr. Nelson said.
"Glad ye come. Ye"ll find everything all ready for ye! "Mandy has a fire goin", an" th" chowder"s hot."
"Who is he?" asked Mrs. Nelson, in a whisper.
"Old Tin-Back," replied her husband. "He"s a lobsterman and a character. I engaged his wife to clean the cottage, and be here when you arrived."