Martin’s face beamed with pleasure.
“Would you? Would you really go?” he asked eagerly. “Say, Jan, that’ll be fine. Say, if you only wouldn’t be so standoffish and proud, you’d learn to like that gang and they’d learn to like you. They’re awfully good-hearted.”
“Well, I’ll try,” said his wife.
CHAPTER VI
§ 1
It was quite an undertaking to go from Cohasset Beach to Freeport, on the opposite side of Long Island. One had to take the steam train to Jamaica and change cars there; the connections were bad; it took the better part of two hours. But Alice had written her sister week after week begging her and Martin to spend a Sunday with them and finally a date had been set. It was the end of the Beardsleys’ stay at Freeport, and the visit could not be further postponed if the Devlins were to accomplish it at all. Jeannette was eager to go, but to Martin it meant the loss of his one day in the week of yachting. There were races every Sunday afternoon and since Martin had acquired his little A-boat, there was no joy in life for him equal to the pleasure of sailing it. But it held no joy for Jeannette; she resented the boat and everything connected with it; to her it only meant ninety dollars’ worth of extravagance and it took her husband away from her every week-end. He spent Saturday afternoons “tuning up,” as he described it, for the race on Sunday. She saw little of him on these days; he was always at the yacht club and would often be half-an-hour to an hour late for dinner. He never had had any sense of time.
So she had patiently urged the expedition to Freeport and had made him promise weeks in advance that this particular date should be dedicated to the visit.
The day was a glorious success. Martin was in his sweetest, merriest mood and no regret over his lost sport lingered in his heart. There was only a faint stirring of wind and little indication that it would freshen, as previous days had been marked by calm; he was consoled, therefore, in thinking that in all probability there would be no race that afternoon.
Alice, Roy, and the children met them at the Freeport Station. They were all going on a picnic over to the beach it was announced; a launch would take them to a sandy reef that was their own discovery; it left a little after eleven; they just had time.
The beach when they reached it was totally deserted. No one ever came there, Alice explained; it was a narrow, hummocky strip of sand, a mile or more in length with no habitation on it but a gray weather-beaten shack falling into ruins. A rickety one-board pier jutted out into the lagoon that separated this reef from the island shore and the launch stopped there a moment to let the little party disembark before it went chug-chugging on its way to Coral Beach farther along the coast, where a small tent colony was springing into being. The launch would return for them about five o’clock.