"Do I remember Jennie Foster!" she said. "We grew up together."
"Well, she keeps a boarding-house in Portland now in winters and comes to the old home, summers. We boarded with her, and now, instead of closing up the place, she has rented it to me."
Eliza shook her head. "Pretty high up," she commented. "Some o' those February gales will pretty near shave you off the hill."
"A good many husky generations have been brought up and gone forth into the world out of that house," said Mrs. Wright cheerfully. "There are some trees, you know. Do you remember the apple orchard?"
"Huh!" commented Eliza. "I know how the scrawny little things look when they're bare! A lot o' shelter they'll be."
Mrs. Wright dropped her head a little to one side and her kind grey eyes rested on Eliza's grief-scarred face. "I'm glad I came to see you," she said irrelevantly.
"I'm a kind of a Job's comforter, I'm afraid. When I've thought of anything the past fortnight I've thought about Brewster's Island,—a sort of a counter-irritant, I guess."
"No, no, we can't have that. You mustn't call the Blessed Isle by such a name."
"Perhaps it won't be such a Blessed Isle after you've spent a winter there," remarked Eliza drily.
Mrs. Wright smiled. "I know it was your native place, and I hoped you might have pleasant associations with it."