“Who are you?” asked the occupant of the red pirogue.
“I’m Ben O’Dell,” replied the youth in the water, smiling encouragingly and brushing aside a bang of wet hair. “I live on the point when I’m not away downriver at school. I was surprised when I first saw you—so surprised that I upset and had to swim.”
“Is that O’Dell’s Point?” asked the other.
“Yes. You can’t see the house for those big willows on the bank.”
“Yes, I’m her son. I’m not so small as I look with just my head out of water. I guess I’d better climb in, if you don’t mind, and paddle you ashore.”
“You may climb in, if you want to—but I can paddle myself all right.”
“Is she steady? Can I put all my weight on one side, or must I get in over the end?”
Ben pulled himself up and scrambled in. A paddle lay aft. He took it up and stroked for the shore.
“It was a funny place to find you,” he ventured.
“Well—queer. A little girl all alone in a big pirogue and caught against the net stakes.”
“I’m eleven years old. I caught the pirogue there on purpose because I thought I was getting near to O’Dell’s Point and I was afraid to land in the dark.”
“No-o—not herself—but I have a letter of intr’duction to her.”
They stepped ashore and crossed the beach side by side. Ben felt bewildered, despite his eighteen years of life and six feet of loosely jointed height. This small girl astonished and puzzled him with her gravity that verged on the tragic, her assured and superior manners, her shabby attire and her cool talk of “a letter of intr’duction.” He possessed a keen sense of humor but he did not smile. Even the letter of introduction struck him as being pathetic rather than funny. He was touched by pity and curiosity and profoundly bewildered.
“You are big,” she remarked gravely as they passed between the old apple trees. “Bigger than lots of grown men. I thought you were just a little boy when I couldn’t see anything but your head. You must be quite old.”
“I’m eighteen; and I’m going to college this fall—if mother makes me. But I’d sooner stop home and work with Uncle Jim,” he replied.
At that moment they cleared the orchard and came upon the ell and woodshed of the wide gray house and Mr. James McAllister in the door of the shed. McAllister backed and vanished in the snap of a finger.