The Windy Hill

by Cornelia Meigs

Oliver had one more question to ask.

"I want to know your last name, and Polly's," he said. "I can't think how you knew mine and I had quite forgotten to wonder about yours until Janet reminded me that I had never heard it. I have no name for you but the Beeman."

"If you want a longer name for Polly, you can call her Polly Marshall," his friend answered, "but as for me I rather like being called the Beeman. We will keep to that title a little longer if you are willing. And now it is high time that I gave some attention to my bees."

Oliver had no difficulty, later in the day, in borrowing the sailboat from John Massey, although he was obliged to give the vague message, "that man who keeps bees up the hill said you would lend her to me."

"Sure, I will," replied John Massey heartily. "Just be careful you don't go aground on the bars. The river is shallow for this time of year, though it can be pretty fierce when the floods are up."

Oliver shook out the shabby sail, set the rudder for a long tack downstream, and was off. The breeze was coming in gentle puffs, so that the boat moved slowly through the water, the ripples making a sleepy whisper under the bow and the tiller, now and then, jerking lazily under his hand. One side of the stream was marshy so that he pushed into tall grass and cat-tails and startled an indignant kingfisher who was dozing on a dead tree. The bird went skimming off, a flash of blue and white that he followed as he came about.

On the other side, the current ran close beside the high banks of earth that protected the fields within. The channel was scoured deep and the restless stream was cutting into the dikes, washing long black scars just above the water line.

"That oughtn't to be," pronounced Oliver, and was glad to see that, farther downstream, the carving away of the earth had been stopped by patches of broken stone. For at least a mile, however, at the bend of the river, the banks were crumbling and neglected.

He could look up and see, first the farms of the low-lying land, the treetops and pointed silos just showing above the dike, then the hillside, with the wavering white line of the road, then that strange, shabby dwelling of yellow stone almost hidden in its cluster of trees. Above it showed Cousin Jasper's house, very big and red, set upon the slope almost at the top of the ridge. On the other side of the stream there were fewer dwellings, the wooded slope rising to the more open green of the orchard and then to the grassy declivity of the Windy Hill. As he neared the bridge he passed a long gray stone house with its gardens a glowing mass of color that came down to the water's very edge. This, he remembered, was the abode of Cousin Eleanor, and he laughed at himself as, even at this safe distance, he steered his course very cautiously along the opposite bank.

At the bridge he was obliged to turn, and run before the wind to make his way upstream again. He lay stretched out comfortably along the rail, paying little attention to the boat and thinking of many things. There was Cousin Jasper—how Oliver had misjudged him that day he thought of running away. His cousin had been tactless and stubborn, but the Cousin Eleanor affair had been well meant, after all.