aring grotesquely like strange
heads of animals. Kit thought whimsically how the Dean might have added
them with profit to his prehistoric collection. There was no glimpse or
hint of the town to be seen down here. Not even a boat house, only one
long pier. About a mile and a half from shore was a lightship, and farther
out a white steamer showed in perfect outline against the blueness of the
morning sky.

Kit followed Sandy's lead, hardly realizing the distance she was covering,
until he suddenly disappeared behind a nosing headland. When she rounded
it, she saw a cottage built close under the shelter of the bluff. The sand
drifted like snow half-way up to its windows. It had been painted red
once, but now its old clapboards were the color of sorrel, and
weather-beaten and wave-washed like the boulders. There were fish nets
drying on tall staples driven in behind a couple of overturned rowboats,
and at that first glimpse it seemed to her as if there were children
everywhere. Four stalwart boys from fourteen to eighteen worked over the
nets, mending them; around the back door there were four or five more, and
sitting in the sunlight in a low rocking-chair was an old woman as
picturesque as some ancient sibyl.

Sandy seemed to greet them as old acquaintances, so Kit called
good-morning in good old Yankee fashion. The boys eyed her, somewhat
askance, and all of the children scurried like a flock of startled
chickens as she came up the boardwalk to the kitchen door, but the old
grandmother kept serenely on paring potatoes, calm-eyed and unembarrassed.

"How do you do?" said Kit, smilingly. "I'm Dean Peabody's grandniece. I
just came west yesterday, and Sandy brought me here this morning. I didn't
know where he was going, but he seemed to know the way."

The old woman's brown eyes followed the movement of the dog.

"He ver' fine, that dog," she said, deliberately. "He come ver' often. I
know him since he is un petit chien, ver' small pup--so beeg." She
measured with her hand from the ground.

"Do you know the Dean?" Kit asked, sitting down on the doorstep beside
her. "He lives up in the big house on the bluff, where the pine and
maples are."

The old woman shook her head placidly.

"I not go up that bluff in forty-eight year."

Kit's eyes widened with quick interest. Just then a girl a little older
than herself came out of the kitchen door. Two long braids of straight
brown hair hung over her shoulders, and her dre