“He must be ancient if he has to totter along on two sticks,” Jerry said. “Besides, he has a stately, professorish sort of style. Do you suppose he really does want us to write to him?”
“Of course he does,” Greg said; “he tells us to often enough. Think of being alone out there with savages, and that bearded chief coming with poison bottles and all.”
“Shut up, Greg,” said Jerry; “you don’t understand. There’s more in this than meets the eye, Chris. I didn’t get on to this crab salad business when you read it.”
Neither had I; in fact, I hadn’t got on to it until Jerry said it in proper English.
“He’s a good sort, poor old dear,” I said. “Why do you suppose they keep him out there?”
“He’s there of his own free will, right enough,” Jerry said.
But I didn’t think so.
We were still confabbing over the letter, and explaining bits to Greg, who was hopelessly mystified, when Mother came out to transplant some columbine that had wandered into the lawn. We did a quick secret consultation and then decided to let her in on the Castaway. So we bolted after her and took away the trowel and showed her the letter. She read it through twice, and then said:
“Oh, Ailsa must hear this, and Father!” But what we wanted to know was whether or not we might write to the Castaway, because we didn’t quite want to without letting her know about it. She laughed some more and said, “yes, we might,” and that he was “a dear,” which was what we thought.
We decided that we would write immediately, so Jerry dashed off to Father’s study and got two sheets of nice thin paper with “17 Luke Street” at the top in humpy green letters, and I borrowed Aunt Ailsa’s fountain-pen, which turned out to be empty. I might have known it, for they always are empty when you need them most. Jerry, like a goose, filled it over the clean paper we were going to use for the letter, and it slobbered blue ink all over the top sheet. But the under one wasn’t hurt, and we thought one page full would be all we could write, anyway. We took the things out to the porch table, and Greg held down the corner of the paper so it wouldn’t flap while I wrote. Jerry sat on the arm of my chair and thought so excitedly that it jiggled me.