"I wish you'd call me Nancy," Nancy ventured. "Everyone does, and I don't seem nearly big enough to be Anne. I love your flowers and oh, what a lot of berries you are going to have!"
The old man straightened his shoulders—at least he tried to! His flowers were his children.
"In my younger days this here garden was the show of the Island," he answered proudly. "Folks come from all round to look at it! Thirty-two kinds of posies and that want countin' the hollyhocks that grew like trees—taller'n I am. And vines and berries and vegetables. But I can't work like I used to, and Miss Sabriny don't like anyone but me to touch things. So things have to go abit. Miss Nancy, huh! Ye are a little thing." But his smile was kindly. "And I hope ye bring some sunshine to Happy House."
Suddenly Nancy exclaimed: "Oh—the lake! I didn't realize how close we were to it."
Beyond the raspberry patch and the kitchen garden stretched an old orchard. Through the trees Nancy had glimpsed the sapphire blue of Lake Champlain.
"Is that orchard ours?" she asked Jonathan.
"That it is. I helped my father plant those thar trees myself and they're the best bearin' on the hul of Nor' Hero!"
Nancy stood irresolute. She wanted to explore further—to run out among the apple trees to the very cliff of the lake. But she was bursting to write to Claire—there was already so much to tell her.
So with one long, lingering look she retraced her steps back to the house. As she passed slowly under the trees she was startled by the movement of a single slat in one of the upstairs blinds. And instinctively she knew that an eye peeped at her from behind it.
Miss Milly—it must, of course, be the "poor Miss Milly" of whom Webb had spoken!