"Uncle Jed," she said in an awed tone, and planting her sharp elbows on her knees in order to prop her serious face, "The Ship is on The Rock."
All the morning Jed had been trying to keep his back to the fact.
"Yo' sure is one triflin' child," he muttered.
"All the same, The Ship is there, Uncle Jed, and that means that something is going to happen. It is going to happen long o' Ridge House—and nothing has happened here before. Things have just gone on—and—on and on——"
The girl's voice trailed vaguely—she was looking at The Ship.
Jed began to have that sensation described by him as "shivers in the spine of his back." Mary was fascinating him. Suddenly she asked:
"Uncle Jed, what are they-all sending you to—fetch?" Mary almost said "fotch."
"How you know, child, I is goin' to fotch—anything?" Jed's spine was affecting his moral fibre.
Mary gave her elfish laugh. She rarely smiled, and her laugh was a mere sound—not harsh, but mirthless.
"I know!" she said, "and it came—no matter what it is on The Ship, and I 'low it will go—on The Ship."