“Well, I shall try to restrain my curiosity for a week, but no longer. A week from to-day I go again. What do you say?”
“I say we don’t set any time, but just leave the whole thing to chance. We’ll go again when it’s convenient, whether it be to-morrow, next week, or the week after. It is more fun to have it chancy like that.”
Ellen agreed that it would be so, and they went on to deliver their supplies to Miss Rindy.
“We brought a box of strawberries, but there wasn’t any cream to-day. Mr. Nevins says it must have been put off on one of the other islands,” Ellen explained.
“Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Rindy. “That’s just the way it goes. Yesterday they lost our mackerel out of the wagon and some one picked it up on the road, and to-day this happens. Well, we can have strawberry shortcake for supper, and as soon as I can get around to it I’ll go up to Portland and lay in a lot of supplies, things that can’t be had here. It is rather disconcerting, but I’ve been up against worse situations over in France.”
“I think it’s rather fun not to know exactly what you are going to have, something like a game in which you don’t know just how you will come out.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” returned Miss Rindy. “Suppose you turn to and hull these strawberries while Beulah is making the shortcake; then I can attend to the rest of the supper. Did you have a good walk?”
“Fine,” Ellen answered, but she said no word of the haunted house.
CHAPTER XVI
THE BRIDGE