“We feared the boat had been carried out to sea and that our little maid was lost,” said Aunt Martha, “and the men have looked for you all about the shore. The ‘Somerset’ is in harbor and its crew are doing much mischief on shore, so that we have had much to disturb us. What a tangle of hair this is for me to brush out,” she added, passing a tender hand over Anne’s dark locks.
How good the warm water felt to Anne’s bruised feet; and she was sure that nothing ever tasted so good as the porridge. The rough hair was brushed into smooth braids, and it was a very happy little girl who went to sleep in the upper chamber with her wooden doll beside her, and the white kitten curled up on the foot of her bed.
“I’m glad I’m not a little Indian girl,” was Anne’s last thought before she went to sleep.
It was late the next morning when she awoke. Her soiled and torn clothes were not to be seen, but a dress of clean cotton and a fresh pinafore lay on the wooden stool.
“My, it’s nice to be clean,” thought Anne, remembering the uncomfortable efforts that she and Amanda had made to wash their faces in water from the island spring.
“It’s near noon, dear child,” said Mrs. Stoddard, as Anne came into the kitchen. “You shall have a boiled egg for your breakfast, and I am cooking a fine johnnycake for you before the fire. You must be nigh starved. To think of that Amos Cary hiding the oar instead of fetching you straight home.”
“But he worked all the time to make a house for us, and to cook the fish,” explained Anne, “and he speaks well of my father. I like him better than when he called me names.”
“Of course you do, child; and I did not think him so smart a boy as he proves. ’twas no small thing to start a fire as he did.”
“’twas Amanda made him come home,” said Anne; “she told him we would walk through the water to the Point, and then he said he would fetch us.”
“Your Uncle Enos thinks Amos may make a good sailor,” said Aunt Martha. “Indeed, if it were not for these British ships hovering about our shores it is likely that Skipper Cary would have been off to the Banks and taken Amos with him.”