The big man shook his head. “No, they are not yet taught to write,” he said. “It may be I’ll be sailing back come spring, and then I’ll tell them about the little maid I saw in Province Town.”
“Tell them my name is Anne,” said she eagerly. “I wish I could go to Boston and find my father. I must hurry now, but I wish I knew the names of your little girls.”
“They have good names,” said the big man. “Each one is named for a grandmother. One is Betsey and the other Hannah.”
“I’ll remember,” said Anne, and she said “Good-bye” and went quickly on toward Mrs. Starkweather’s.
“I do wish I could go and find my father,” she thought as she walked along. “I know he’d like to see me better than a letter. I wish I had asked William Trull to take me in the big ship. But maybe Aunt Martha would not wish me to ask him.”
All day Anne thought about the letter that Captain Enos had promised to write for her; and when supper was over and the kitchen began to grow dusky with the shadows of the October evening, she ran out to the little shed and came tugging in a big root of pine.
“May I put this on the fire, Aunt Martha?” she asked, “that Uncle Enos may see to write?”
“Tis a pine knot,” said Mrs. Stoddard. “We shall need many such for light and heat before the long winter goes. But put it on, child. ’Tis a good plan to write thy father.”
The pine knot blazed up brightly, and Captain Enos drew the table near the open fire, and, with Anne perched on a high stool beside him, and Mrs. Stoddard busy with her knitting, while the white kitten purred happily from its comfortable place under her chair, the letter was begun. Word for word, just as Anne told him, Captain Enos wrote down about the stockings and shoes, the school and the kitten, the pink beads and William Trull, and at last Anne said: “That is all, only that I want to see him and that I love him well,” and Captain Enos finished the letter, and Anne went up-stairs to bed.
“I have a plan to take a cargo of fish to Boston, Martha,” said Captain Enos, as soon as Anne had gone. “The ‘Somerset’ will sail on the first fair wind. I can fill the sloop with good cod by the time she is out of gunshot; and I’ll venture to say they will bring a good price in Boston Town.”