Uncle Terry: A Story of the Maine Coast

by Charles Clark Munn

It was a new departure for him to find so cordial a welcome among total strangers, and he could not quite understand it. He was not inclined to quarrel with fate, however, especially when it had thrown him into the society of such people. It is needless to say the "tender marcies" of at least one of them were quite to his taste.

"I should like to row up to where I was left boat-less yesterday," he said to Telly after Uncle Terry had gone, "and finish the sketch I began, and also try to find the cushions I dropped in the woods; may I ask you to go too?"

"I should be glad to if mother can spare me," she answered.

When he rowed out of the little harbor where he had left his boat, Telly sat in the stern holding the tiller ropes, and shading her winsome face was the same broad sun-hat he had seen on the rock beside her the evening before. It was a long four-mile pull, but he was unconscious of it, and when he helped his companion out and secured the boat he said, "Now I am going to ask a favor of you, Miss Terry. I want you to stand in just the position I first saw you and let me make a sketch of you. You were leaning on a rock and resting your head on one hand."

Telly looked puzzled.

"You did not know I saw you out on the point last evening, did you?" he added, smiling. "I stood and looked at you for five minutes and then walked away. I did not know who you were then, or that I should meet you later. If I had I would not have been so rude."

The color came to Telly's face at his evident admiration, but she did not say no to his proposal and stood patiently in the position he wished while he made the sketch. "There," he exclaimed when it was finished, "I shall transfer that to canvas when I go back, and whenever I look at it I shall recall this day and—you."

"Will you need the picture for that?" she replied with a smile. It was the first little coquettish word she had uttered, and it amused Albert. "That sounds like Alice," he said, and added hastily, "Alice is my only sister, and I think more of her than of any other woman living."

What these two young people, so rapidly becoming acquainted, had to say all that long summer afternoon need not be recorded. Telly sat on the boat's cushions in a shady nook and watched Albert finish his sketch and then listened to his talk. He told her all about his home and sister, and Frank as well. In a way they exchanged a good deal of personal history of interest to each other, but to no one else, so it need not be repeated. Then they gathered flowers, like two children, and Telly insisted on decorating the boat. When it was done she wanted him to make a sketch of it for her. "Draw yourself as holding the oars," she said, "and I will try to paint a picture from the sketch to remember you by," she added with a smile. Then, as the sun was getting low, they started for home. The breeze had all vanished and the sea was like glass. Only the long ground swells barely lifted their boat and made the shadows of the trees along the shore wave in fantastic undulations. When they reached the Cape Telly said, "You had better go around to the cove where father keeps his boats. It's nearer to the house, and there is a float there where you can pull your boat out."

She waited until he had done so, and then stooped and selected a few of the flowers with which they had decked the boat. "I am going to paint them," she said quietly, as she turned and followed Albert up to the house.