“Well, to-day will make at least once this summer; and there’s no time like the present,” urged Nancy. “Nelly will never forgive us if she hears we were so near and did not go a little further to see her. But if you like, you could wait here for us to pick you up on the way back, Anne.”
“No, I will go too,” said Anne, who had no mind to wait in the lonesomeness of Idlewild.
It was less than half a mile from Idlewild to the Cove, across Mr. Poole’s well laid-out golf links. This too showed the lack of care. Already the trespassing weeds and lawless grasses were taking advantage of the generous July sun to riot and grow bold. The unkempt green was really no less beautiful; but it shocked Anne.
“I shall write Father to-night,” she repeated. “It is dreadful!”
CHAPTER IX
NELLY SACKETT’S HOME
Over another stile in the handsome wall clambered the Round Robin, and the girls found themselves in simple pasture-land once more. This was land that Captain Sackett would not sell to the rich man who had wanted to own and enclose for his sole pleasure the whole shore line from the Harbor to Camp Round Robin. The little path was almost lost in a tangle of blueberry bushes, juniper and sweet fern, where the wild roses were already in bud. But it led inevitably to the Cove at the head of which stood the old white house.
“What rough walking!” grumbled Anne, holding up her white skirt and picking her way between the briars. “Not much like Father’s nice path.”
“It is the old Indian trail,” said Nancy. “Once it was all like this along the shore to our place and beyond, so Mother says. That was fifteen years ago, before any of us were born.”
They spied Captain Sackett at a distance, hammering at some new lobster-pots on the beach in front of his house. His motor-boat was anchored a little way out in the water, and an old dory was drawn up on the beach. “Let’s give the yell and surprise him,” said Nancy.