Anne Carlsen; that was her new name! She rather liked the sound of it. She had never cared for the jerky syllables “Anne Poole.” Her father had been a foreigner it seemed; and she had despised and laughed at those other foreigners! And she had not a penny in the world; no home; nobody who seemed to want her. But at any rate she was the daughter of honest people and her grandfather was the best man who ever lived! There was nothing for her to be ashamed of but the foolish ideas she had had in the past.
This was what Anne was thinking this morning as she moved about the pretty little room in Cap’n Sackett’s house, next to Nelly’s, where she had spent two days and nights as a guest. She was setting the room to rights and packing her little bag to go back to Camp. The Captain had said that was what she was to do at present; there were still two weeks before the Camp would break up, when Round Robin would go back to the city and school. Anne was still in Tante’s care, and Tante was expecting her, he said.
Anne finished her little chores—they seemed very easy nowadays—and stood looking out of the window through the branches of the old apple tree at the bay. It was a sweet little view. Anne thought she had never seen a prettier one anywhere; the green grass above the quiet beach, the sparkling sea beyond the evergreen trees making a border. This was the view which her little mother had loved, too. In that very room she had sung Anne to sleep, a tiny baby. And that blue vastness was the ocean which all her Yankee ancestors had loved; so too had her Norse father, of a race of famous sailor-men. Anne remembered it was the Norse sailors who had really first discovered America.
Little white waves were breaking up on the beach where Cap’n Sackett was just landing from his boat with a basket of fish. He had been out since four o’clock that morning. How hard he worked; and how everybody respected him! It was fine to be honored by your neighbors.
Someone tapped on the door and Nelly entered. “Hello,” she said. “Can I help? Oh, you’re all ready. Anne! I’m sorry you are going away! I wish you were going to stay—always!” Nelly stammered at the last word.
“It’s funny, but it seems like home,” said Anne simply. She felt suddenly lonely at the thought of going away from this nest into which she had fluttered almost by accident; before she knew it had been builded by her own flock of sea-birds, and that she herself had once been sung asleep in its safety. “How long have you known, Nelly?”
Anne had no need to explain what she meant. Nelly knew she was thinking of her name and history.
“I think I have always guessed it,” said Nelly, “ever since I first saw you on the pier, the day you landed. I felt as if we were something together. I can’t explain what I mean. No, you didn’t feel so, I know; it didn’t seem possible, then. No person told me till Uncle Eph did the other day. I just intued it!” She looked shyly at Anne.
“You must have hated me,” said Anne, remembering the disagreeable airs she had put on and the way she had snubbed Nelly Sackett.
Nelly considered her cousin gravely. “No,” she said, “I didn’t hate you. I thought maybe that was the way I’d feel if I were in your place. Money often does turn people’s heads, doesn’t it? We aren’t a bit alike, really. But I guess there is something alike inside us. There must be inside everybody.”